


I got a feeling this will shake me down

by Euny_Sloane



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Also bird names used as pet names. Or insults. It's hard to tell., Angst with a Happy Ending, Boot Worship, Bootblacking, Crack Treated Seriously, Dominance, Dominant Beelzebub, Dubious Consent, Efforts vary - at least for Gabriel, Enemies to Lovers, Enemies to... something. I don't think they know., Gags, He/Him Pronouns For Gabriel (Good Omens), Humiliation, I mean I think it's a happy ending who knows what you think, I mean they're not human so neither of them fit into a binary especially well, Ineffable Bureaucracy (Good Omens), Lots of offensive words so many that I've lost track of them, Masochism, Nonbinary Beelzebub (Good Omens), Other, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Sadism, Spanking, Submission, Submissive Gabriel, They/Them Pronouns for Beelzebub (Good Omens), Under-negotiated Kink, Verbal Humiliation, Whipping, Workplace Sex, the inherent eroticism of voluntarily submitting to pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:42:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23168716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euny_Sloane/pseuds/Euny_Sloane
Summary: Heaven and Hell receive some important correspondence following the failure of their plans for Armageddon. Gabriel and Beelzebub are thrown together. Neither of them expect what is coming when Beelzebub discovers a surprise in Gabriel's closet, least of all Gabriel.Nor does Gabriel have any idea how badly he’ll want it.
Relationships: Beelzebub & Dagon (Good Omens), Beelzebub/Gabriel (Good Omens)
Comments: 56
Kudos: 114





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Read the tags read the tags read the tags.** It does what it says on the box - Beelzebub and Gabriel are a dysfunctional, dubious mess. Negotiation for anything they do sits in between nominal and entirely neglected. To what extent consent is meaningfully obtained is up for debate (in your own head, not the comments, please!). And **take good note of the humiliation tag**. If that’s not your cup of tea, neither will this fic be. Gabriel and Beelzebub are both definitely into... all of this... but it's not a smooth road. 
> 
> The smut doesn’t really start until chapter 2, in case you want to skip ahead, or read one substantially less dubious chapter of Gabriel and Beelzebub trying to get along.
> 
>  **Schedule:** I will post all five chapters within about two weeks, probably Monday/Thursday.
> 
> This fic would not actually exist, or be this clear, without the efforts of four lovely people. Their help has been an embarrassment of riches.  
> [summerofspock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerofspock/pseuds/summerofspock/works) was a detail-oriented, skilled beta and writes with a deftness and speed I can only gawp at.  
> [thestarlitrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thestarlitrose/pseuds/Thestarlitrose/works) encouraged me right from the start, sent me inspiring fanart, and asked me questions about Gabe and Beez every time I got stuck. This is not on brand for her fic, but she writes lovely stories, especially with Warlock and Adam.  
> [featherxquill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/featherxquill/pseuds/featherxquill), who writes her own compelling power play fic (among other things), gave me direction that bumped up the thirst by 50% everywhere she commented. She also called it “hot and dysfunctional” (which I am still not over).  
> And [homosociallyours](https://archiveofourown.org/users/homosociallyyours/pseuds/homosociallyyours) who read it when I was feeling stuck and discouraged and seriously considering giving up - they say the nicest things and also write lovely fic!

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/186531802@N03/49664039523/in/dateposted-public/)

Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies and Prince of Hell, had been waiting for seven minutes in Heaven. In a waiting room.

They'd assumed that Heaven should have something more civilized than a row of stiff-backed metal chairs and a receptionist who clicked her pen in an inconsistent rhythm. 

Click. 

Clickclickclick. 

Click. 

Clickclick. Clickclickclick. 

Click. 

While Beelzebub appreciated the novel idea for torturing souls, they had people to torment, other places to defile. They snapped, "Where the fuck is he?"

The receptionist, hands cupped just above her hot lemon water to fend off the overlarge flies that buzzed overhead, stifled a sigh. "It's on his calendar, Lord Prince. I’m sure he’ll be here soon.”

Beelzebub narrowed their eyes and a fly slipped under the angelic hands to go for a dip in the lemon water. The receptionist sighed and sat back, defeat in her slumped shoulders. Beelzebub smiled. 

They produced a nail clipper. Jagged-edged half moons of black-lacquered nail fell onto the pristine glowing floor in a sigil that Beelzebub knew would eat away at the tile, given time. 

It was twenty-two minutes past. They shoved the chair next to them so it clanged on the floor, bared their teeth at the startled receptionist, and demanded, “Where. Is. Your. Useless. Pompous. Excuse. For. A. Boss.” 

“I’m sure he’ll be here any minute, Lord Prince.” Beelzebub could hear the edge of panic in her voice. Another 10 minutes of waiting and Beelzebub would have her requesting reassignment to some Earth backwater for the next hundred years. If Beelzebub had to come to this Lucifer-forsaken place every other week for some unspecified portion of eternity, the least they could do is burn through every last one of Gabriel’s assistants. Perhaps without them, he’d miss some of these meetings entirely. 

That was a thought. Maybe they were going about this the wrong way. If they could wait patiently, and their meeting time ran out, they wouldn’t have to look at Gabriel’s smug face at all today. 

Click. 

Clickclick. 

Click.

Or not. 

While it wasn’t exactly considered polite to perform demonic miracles in Heaven, or angelic ones in Hell, Beelzebub wasn’t exactly invested in being polite. “I’ll be sure to tell him you told me to go find him myself,” they told the receptionist, and snapped. 

* * *

Gabriel felt the air displace and fill with the cloying scent of rotting fruit. He looked at his watch (a complex affair of symbols and equations), and cursed. He knew that odor. That new assistant would be hearing about this. He'd been dreading and preparing for this little meeting for weeks. 

Turning, he demanded, “What are you doing in my apartment?”

“Is this a walk-in closet?” Beelzebub sneered. 

“Yes,” he retorted in a clipped tone. 

“Well. This is me, walking in,” they said. All five feet of them loomed over Gabriel, who was seated on a cushioned bench, crisply tying his lavender necktie. 

“I can see that.” Gabriel finished settling his tie with one last tug, slipped on and buttoned his suit jacket. His assistant had tried to tell him that it wasn’t fashionable to keep them buttoned up all the time, but what did she know?

"What brings you to my home, Lord Prince?” He leaned over to close his tie drawer, rows of immaculately rolled silk in hues of violet through mauve sliding out of sight. He didn’t think about what rested on a narrow shelf behind him. 

“Well, you kept me waiting, you incompetent archan… what are _those_?”

Gabriel stood abruptly. A sly smile slid onto Beelzebub’s face. “What _are_ those doing here?”

 _Oh fuck._ “None of your business.” And as he felt the prickle on the back of his neck, the feel of a predator closing in, Gabriel thought, _Wrong move, soldier._

“Are those _boots_?”

He sighed, set his shoulders. “We have a meeting to keep, Lord Beelzebub.”

Beelzebub’s smile cracked open, into a raw red grin. “We are meeting, _Gabriel._ And why do you have” —they shoved past him with an elbow canted out— “a whole shelf of shiny black boots in your closet?” Before he could reply, they’d grabbed one, toes spiked, lug soles immaculate, mirror-shined polish reflecting back the closet’s blue-white glow. 

“They’re boots. Obviously. Where do you keep your shoes?”

“That’s what miracles are for, you son of a pigeon. And they definitely don’t match your decor, so...” Beelzebub looked him dead in the face and said, “No.” 

Gabriel tried to reassure himself that he was two heads taller than this filthy, sarcastic wretch and didn’t feel intimidated. 

He tried. 

Beelzebub shook their head slowly. “No. You can’t. No fucking way. Not an angel.” In their mouth, angel sounded like something foul. 

He sighed. “Yes. I am an angel. Yes. This is a closet. Yes. We had a meeting. Yes. I was late. I apologize for the inconvenience.” He gestured behind him, towards the door. “Can we go now?”

“Do you wear them?” Their teeth gleamed. “Or polish them? Or—" They released a dramatic. gasp. "Do you _kiss_ them?”

“What are you talking about?” Gabriel’s corporation didn’t need a stomach, so why did it feel like he had one hanging at about the level of his ankles, as Beelzebub stepped up, toe to toe with him? Toe to toe with their own shit-kicking boots. 

“No, you can’t fucking possibly want to kiss them. Who would you bend your insufferable head to? Not another angel, I’m sure. Who could be good enough for the Archangel Gabriel?” they sneered.

Gabriel took an involuntary half step back, tried to rally. “Oh and I’m sure you all line up to kiss each other’s boots in Hell, don’t you? For fun?”

“I don’t kiss anyone’s boots.” Beelzebub’s smile turned flinty. “I make them kiss mine. _Professionally_.”

Gabriel tried to laugh, but it stuck. He tried to clear his throat, but couldn’t get it to cooperate. 

_Enough of this,_ he thought, and with a snap, they were both seated in his office, boot returned to its proper shelf. 

“So. Lord Prince.” Gabriel rustled over the pile of papers to find the agenda he’d prepared last week.

“So. _Archangel,_ ” Beelzebub sneered. 

“I prepared an agenda.”

“And I do believe our meeting time this week is almost up.”

“I have time, if you…”

“Oh, I have things to do. But thank you for your time. It’s been very...” They paused to scan Gabriel’s face. “Educational.” 

After his office door closed behind them, Gabriel let his head fall into his hands and groaned. The movement pulled at his side, where Beelzebub had elbowed him. It was going to bruise. 

He wondered idly what shade of purple it would be, sighed, and opened his day planner. 

* * *

Beelzebub stalked along the dim corridor, hellhound walking beside, and considered what size those boots were, exactly. Not that shoe sizes really mattered with miracles at hand. Or that those boots mattered at all. 

Fuck Gabriel and his fucking boots. A good kicking, that’s what they needed. They turned down another slick corridor, guttering bulbs illuminating the sheen of puddles every few steps. Screams echoed in the distance. 

* * *

Gabriel had spent all day going over the paperwork that his newest assistant had ruined, and then had to write a transfer form. And then a personnel requisition form, for a replacement. 

Weak, that’s what she was. Kept babbling about fingernails. And flies. He hadn’t seen any fingernails when she’d pointed, just a curiously deep pock mark in the floor, easily smoothed over with a simple miracle. 

If she wanted to be back on Earth, fine. He sent her to Des Moines. 

* * *

Two weeks later, Gabriel stood uneasily in the hallway outside Beelzebub’s office. Not for the first time, he deeply resented the letter that Heaven and Hell had received following the catastrophic failure of Armageddon. He could still picture the patterns of the gently curving letters that formed a message in the ancient ethereal script: 

_Play nicely, children. Perhaps if you spoke to one another more, you’d be less keen to go to war._

_Love,_

_Mother._

No direct contact for over a thousand years and now he was stuck having indefinite, bimonthly meetings with the Prince of Hell. 

The door creaked open, and even from the dim, flickering light of the anteroom, the office looked dark inside. 

“Well, are you coming?” they barked. 

Their office was cramped, stacks of folders and papers in every corner, on a perilously leaning bookshelf, and the desk, where Beelzebub had their booted feet kicked up, ankles crossed. 

Gabriel took a seat in the only other chair, a low, rickety affair that a human would recognize from a children’s classroom in the 1980s. Settled, he looked up, and saw the ridged, geometric soles of Beelzebub’s boots. He reached into an inside pocket of his coat to retrieve the agenda he’d prepared, heart beating frantically at his ribs. _Paperwork. Order. That’s what I need._ “I brought two copies of an agen…”

“I made my own agenda,” Beelzebub drawled, ostentatiously recrossing their legs. “Thought I could give you a sense of what kind of workload I’ve got down here.” They retrieved a piece of yellow-edged paper from their desk, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it at Gabriel’s head. 

He caught it. Unwrapped it.

It was a neatly typed, though crumpled, list of Hell's punishments - apparently the ones Beelzebub usually oversaw. 

Most seemed standard enough. Pokers, wax, endlessly dripping faucets, securement in uncomfortable positions. 

A heading caught his eye: Humiliation* (with various subcategories). 

It had a footnote. 

*May not be equally effective with certain types of humans. Can be identified in many cases by their response to an authority figure in shiny black boots who tells them they deserve to be punished. May give these souls the mistaken impression that they are not in Hell. At least at first. 

He had never felt so aware of his Adam's apple before. Perhaps this corporation needed replacing. 

"Well," Beelzebub asked, "thoughtzz?"

He gulped, coughed, and after a brief assessment that under no circumstances would he drink water from Hell anyway, produced a sleek insulated water bottle. 

"Cat got your tongue? We do that, you know. Not my department, but I'm sure I could borrow one."

 _Get a hold of yourself, man,_ Gabriel thought, welcoming the excuse to shut out the vision of those dark lug soles while he drank deeply. He scoffed. "Am I supposed to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule of...what?" He scanned the list for something innocuous. “Setting faucets to drip?"

Beelzebub sneered. "Oh and what do you do? File paperwork? Train? Get 'swole'?" they asked, complete with air quotes. 

"I do oversee the training and rehabilitation of angels whose physical corporations are not being maintained in top condition. And address other infractions as needed. Though they are rare. There are no bad apples in Heaven."

Beelzebub snorted. “No, you send those to Earth.”

Gabriel glared and retorted, “Apparently so do you.”

They traded uninformative reports and mutual barbs and Gabriel's backside grew sore in the awkward chair (which was curiously unresponsive to subtle miracles meant to improve it). They confirmed their next few meeting times. Beelzebub insisted on changing the schedule, insisting they were indefinitely available only at the time Gabriel found most inconvenient: Friday at noon, when he would usually go for a quick workout to get himself in top form for the rest of his paperwork. 

* * *

Gabriel was running late, without explanation, or at least any explanation that he had shared with his most recent assistant: a chirpy, pert-nosed, bright-eyed twit, who had been spouting bullshit at Beelzebub for several minutes with barely a pause for breath.

"Oh, I'm so terribly sorry, Lord Prince. You must think so poorly of us to keep you waiting like this. I know we're invested in a congenial—no, a collegial relationship, and we really do want to make this partnership work. I'm certain that he wouldn't keep you waiting for even a minute - not one minute - if he could help it. He told me that this meeting cannot be rescheduled at any time without his express permission, but I understand there was some kind of urgent problem, not that I know what, but," and as she paused for breath, Beelzebub reflected. All conflict required sacrifice. 

The moment the assistant opened her mouth to speak again, a fly flew directly into it. She coughed, trying to clear it, but the fly knew its orders well. Straight for the uvula; stop at nothing. She coughed again, turned an unattractive shade of green, and fled the room, hand clutched over her mouth. 

Beelzebub leaned back in satisfaction and hummed a few bars of Another One Bites the Dust. Badly out of tune. 

The office door opened; Gabriel's forcibly positive voice leaked out. "You're just going to have to figure out how to work with her. I don't care about the millipedes, no, or the centipedes. Whatever they are. Suck it up. No whining. Stay solution oriented, that's the key." 

Sandalphon emerged and cast a sour grimace at Beelzebub on his way out. 

Gabriel poked his head out, exasperation fading into wry amusement as he took in Beelzebub waiting for him. He noticed the empty desk chair. "Where did my assistant go?"

Beelzebub shrugged. "Seemed like she was in a rush, wherever she went." 

Gabriel cocked his head to the side skeptically, and waited. 

"Don't look at me if you can't keep track of your staff. Are you finally fucking ready?" 

"Yes," he sighed, and welcomed them into his office. 

* * *

Gabriel raised his fist to knock on the door, which swung open just ahead of him. "Good afternoon, Lord Prince."

"Is it?" Beelzebub asked, without raising their head from a report, scrawled over in ink as red as the pen in their left hand. 

"That isn't the reason for the greeting."

"You angels really don't have a sense of humor, do you?"

"I'm still meeting with you because of a single form letter, aren't I?"

Beelzebub grinned. "Oh, he bites?” They set down their pen. “Well, what's it to be today? More of the same reports? Are we going to tell each other we respect each other or do some hand-holding bonding exercise that we designed for corporations and you all picked up on ten years late? Are we going to do"— they gasped, clutched their chest—"trust falls?"

Gabriel self-consciously tucked his folio back under his arm. "What do you propose instead?" 

"Ugh. That's a yes. Revolting. I _propose_ that we don't sit here until our backsides mold to the chair. That's for the collaborators who lived in conflict zones. On level 8. We actually use mold."

Gabriel looked disgusted.

"It's punishment. Torture. What the fuck did you expect? At least we don't make them watch The Sound of Music." Beelzebub paused and then amended, "At least not most of them." 

"The Sound of Music is a perf—"

Beelzebub threw their head back and groaned. "Spare me."

"So what is it you propose we do?" asked Gabriel, irritably.

"A field trip."

"A what?"

"You really are dull up there, aren't you?" they asked.

Gabriel decided not to dignify that with a response.

"I propose that I show you around. In the interest of interdepartmental bonding." They gagged theatrically at the term. "And show you what we do here."

Gabriel felt a frisson of curiosity, tempered by suspicion. "Do you expect me to reciprocate in Heaven?" 

Beelebub grimaced. "No thanks. I've been. Don't need the tour." They shoved back from their desk, chair screeching, and stood.

"Now?" he asked. 

"Do you have something better to do?"

"You propose that I go watch you torture defenseless souls?" 

"They wouldn't be here if they didn't deserve it, you know. Even the pokers in their eyeballs."

Gabriel, veteran of the first war, blanched.

"And no," Beelzebub said. "I don't think my staff would appreciate it. We can tour the levels that aren't currently in use. And my personal workshop." 

"Excuse me, your workshop?" Gabriel asked, in spite of himself.

"Where I work. When I'm not here." They shoved the door open and informed Dagon they were going on a "little tour." 

Gabriel did not find Dagon's answering smile to be a reassuring one. 

Gabriel tried to keep track of the turnings, but found himself increasingly lost and uncomfortably glad of the familiar guide. Sounds assaulted them from behind largely identical doors in equally decrepit, badly decorated hallways. 

"How on earth do you keep track of this place? Don't you have any order at all?"

"Hell, Gabriel. This is Hell, remember? What do you expect? And it also happens to be my domain, well, our Lord's, anyway, so shut up." 

"Don't you people get lost?" 

"No. We live here, you prat."

They passed through a few hallways, eerily quiet in the gloom, unsettling after the moaning and crying. Gabriel asked "Isn't there a faster way?" 

"Nope. Only by miracle, which I’m not wasting on this. Security precaution. Even if souls try to escape, they just end up roaming the hallways until one of us catches them. Not a nice experience. Nobody tries it again."

Against the depressing monotony of the corridors, Gabriel's whole body became attuned to the cries and shouts and occasional clanking behind the closed doors. 

He thought he had adjusted - to the lighting, the grating screams, the sobbing, when his foot hit an unexpectedly deep puddle and some soul released a piercing scream. He slipped and caught himself on a wall coated in mildew and peeling paint. 

Beelzebub checked their watch. "Hm. Must be the predatory lenders’ turn with the pokers."

Their course took them through hallways full of strangely muffled weeping, down others where the pooled water looked tinted suspiciously russet, past rooms from which emerged sounds like fists on wet leather, followed by keening wails.

Gabriel fell into an uneasy silence as they walked, tried to make conversation, but stopped at every new shuddering moan, each screech of pain, and finally gave it up after hearing a laugh more unsettling than all of the pained utterances taken together. Beelzebub noticed and said, with what Gabriel could swear was sympathy, "We're almost there." 

The door had an ostentatious lock, but no key. Beelzebub waved their hand and it swung inwards just a fraction. "It's mine," they said, as if that explained anything, and walked inside, gesturing to Gabriel still waiting in the hall, butterflies taking wing in his abdomen as he realized what he could expect in the workshop. His thoughts raced back to the list of techniques Beelzebub had shared. 

"Well, are you coming or what?" 

He stepped inside to find the most open space he’d seen since he'd walked into Hell. He felt on his skin the relief of the space: the air freer with room to move, the sense that he could unfurl his wings here if he wanted. He realized how tense his back had become, rolled his shoulders to ease them. As he did, he breathed deep, catching a smell above the burnt match smell and earthiness of the damp stone: notes of fermenting cider.

It was cleaner too, by far, than anywhere he'd seen in Hell. And almost unsettlingly spare: walls and floor both bare, smooth stone. There was a whipping post, a saltire, a pillory, some kind of bench with metal loops, all arrayed around the periphery of the room. A dark metal drainage grate in the center caught his eye briefly and he decided not to think about it. 

Directly facing the door was an enormous rack with hooks and holders of various sizes, cradling Beelzebub's apparent tools of their trade. He walked over for a closer look, realized nearly all were meant for hitting people. He recognized the whip, of course, and the paddle and the cane; they looked just like the ones that hung above the desk in Beelzebub's office. 

He reached out to another, curiosity blooming inside him, ran his fingers along the strands hanging out of the handle. He heard a thunk and a click from behind him and dropped the strands, craned his neck back to see that Beelzebub had closed the door and was coming to join him. 

Without thinking how it would sound, he asked, "It's soft. How painful can it be?"

_I sound like an idiot._

Beelzebub gave him a withering look. "They aren't all so soft." They took down a braided cat ‘o’ nine tails, brushed the cords across their other palm, where each strand caught for a moment on the knot before falling. Held it out to Gabriel. 

Gabriel realized he'd been staring and quickly turned back to look at the display, shaking his head. Beelzebub slid the braided cat back into its holder, perfectly sized to cradle the handle.

From behind him, he heard Beelzebub's voice, closer now. "I could show you some," they suggested. "As part of the tour."

"...show me?" Realization chased confusion across Gabriel's face. _Fuck, why was he blushing?_

He heard Beelzebub take a step closer. They reached into Gabriel's field of vision and collected the softer flogger, held out their arm to the side, well away from him, and whacked it against their jacketed forearm. The sound echoed in the cavernous space.

Gabriel asked "On your arm?" 

Beelzebub countered "Or yours.”

Gabriel hesitated for a full breath, before collecting his wits to say, "What a ridiculous idea. I can't believe you'd suggest that."

Beelzebub sighed. "Suit yourself, prick. You were the one who was curious." 

"You can't think I would let a demon… let you… hit me?"

"Don't be a prig. Some people like it. Get off on it."

"What? You?" 

Beelzebub raised their eyebrows. "No. _I_ like hitting people with them. But then I'm not the one who got so distracted stroking floggers that the door closing made me jump out of my skin." 

Beelzebub paused and observed, "Or the one who took so long to object to the idea of trying them out."

"What's the point of all this, anyway?" Gabriel asked, with a gesture that encompassed the whole room. 

"The point is inflicting pain. What the fuck do you think? We hit people with these, against their will, and it hurts, so they suffer. You really are slow."

Gabriel was nonplussed. "So what? You just hit them? Why not smite them? Can't you just use your powers on the damned instead of all of this getup?"

Beelzebub twisted their mouth into a sneer. "Look, we torture endless numbers of souls all day long. It's not like miracles are unlimited."

Gabriel shifted uncomfortably, unsure what to say.

"Oh," Beelzebub said. "I forgot they _are_ unlimited. For you. How nice that must be."

Gabriel held up an appeasing hand. "I didn't think, I-"

Beelzebub snorted. "Whatever. Is there anything else you want to see here? Any other facilities you want to tour? I could find someone to demonstrate on. Demons, souls...pick your poison."

As if compelled, Gabriel's gaze slid back to the flogger, strands draped over Beelzebub's elbow. They looked like one of the human's early gods: flail tucked into the crook of their arm, chin proud, eyes a banked fire. 

_Get it together,_ he told himself, before saying with crisp consonants and crossed arms, "No, thank you. I believe this meeting is over, Lord Prince." 

"Oh, fine. I'll help you find your way out," Beelzebub said, reaching back to replace the flogger on the wall. 

"That won't be necessary," Gabriel said, in his most professional, supercilious tone.

"Don't be an idiot. We're farther from the entrance than you've ever been. You'll get lost."

"I never get lost."

Their lip quirking up, Beelzebub said "You looked pretty lost a moment ago when I was demonstrating that flogger,” 

Gabriel’s face set into hard lines. "I don't like what you're insinuating, Lord Prince."

"Uuugh. We're using our titles now, Archangel Gabriel? What a waste of fucking breath. Don't be a stupid prick, just let me guide you out."

"Angels don't get lost. Our faith in God guides us," he said, and made for the exit. 

As he stormed out, back straight as the whipping post in the corner, Beez called out, "Maybe it does everywhere else, but down here it's just the lost and the hungry. Which one are you?"

Gabriel's shoulders stiffened as he stalked away, feet hitting the floor with a satisfactory sound. But the question lingered, in time with his steps. _Lost or hungry, lost or hungry?_

He didn't dwell on it for long. The hallway he stood in looked like all the others, and yet oddly unfamiliar. The wails in the distance had a quality that set his neck hair bristling, and were in a tenor he hadn't heard before. He was going to have to pay attention. No fucking way was he going to get stuck down here for some demon to take advantage of him. He refused to consider turning back for aid. 

Besides, he didn't know which way to go.

And later, much later than he'd expected, finally back at the entrance to Heaven, calves burning and soles aching, he recalled Beelzebub calling him a prig. Saying some people liked it, got off on being hit. He felt an answering echo inside himself, squashed it. _Bullshit. It's all bullshit. Never trust a demon. Liars. All of them._

* * *

They had been meeting regularly for a couple months when, one especially dull Thursday, a letter appeared on his desk. 

_Gabriel - We're busy with the new influx of souls from the recent coup. Think some might have been mis-assigned. Takes an experienced touch to be sure. Can't meet this week. Not sorry about the late notice. - Beelzebub_

Gabriel was relieved to be spared the meeting, of course. It was only that he had already spent a couple of hours collecting and analyzing the data Beelzebub had requested. And consulted at least two colleagues on the agenda. 

That was all, really. The only reason he was even slightly frustrated. He had the time back on his schedule, the agenda would keep, and he didn't have to sit with a sarcastic demon, lobbing witty comebacks at him, reeking of bloated apples in the autumn sun.

He tucked the reports back into the appropriate file folders, but the agenda remained on his desk for a couple more days, mute and incomprehensibly depressing. 

* * *

They got back on track with their meetings, though they missed some here and there. 

Gabriel had to cancel for an all staff retreat once. 

And later, Beelzebub sent another last minute note, explaining only that they'd had personnel reviews. It left Gabriel fuming over wasted time. Beelzebub set both of their agendas on fire when he asked about it two weeks later. They also refused to explain the large bandage on their left hand, or to let him help them in any way. 

They didn't exactly apologize for the fire either, but "I'm sorry your stupid papers aren't hellfire-proof, what fucking piece of shit kind of paper do you use?" was surprisingly close. For Beelzebub, at least. 

Unfortunately the hellfire had startled his newest assistant, who demanded a transfer on the spot. Gabriel sent him to a rare earth metals mining town that seemed to be having a spot of trouble. In Siberia. In January. 

Mostly, they missed meetings because of Beelzebub's schedule. Gabriel asked once why they couldn't get someone to cover. Deputize some soul, perhaps? Heaven did it with saints, after all. And mostly it worked out.

Beelzebub had only raised one dramatic eyebrow, cocked their head back, and asked if he wanted to have Hitler and Pol Pot as colleagues. He didn't ask again. 

* * *

Gabriel started to notice there was a pattern to when his assistants gave their notice. He tried ensuring that Beelzebub didn’t have to wait at all, to keep them from his assistant, but even that didn’t always work. 

After a particularly irritating meeting during which Beelzebub insisted they share more information on their missions than he believed to be appropriate, and Beelzebub called him a pretentious prick, an adjective they hadn’t used before (though the noun was thoroughly familiar by now), he had settled back in to get some work done. Until a screech outside his door grabbed his attention. He’d slammed his door open in haste, only to find his most recent assistant looking at a filing cabinet drawer which had previously been full of administrative records. 

Now it was full of rotting apples, a few flies hovering lazily above. 

He tried to persuade his assistant to take the afternoon off, come back the following week. 

This time he just asked where they wanted to be assigned next; he was tired of coming up with the placements himself. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh dear. It's time for some smut and angst. Enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder to read the tags - this is going to earn its explicit rating right quick and it only gets more explicit in later chapters.

After losing his tenth assistant in seven months, Gabriel moved the meetings with Beelzebub to his apartment. In Hell, they still met in Beelzebub's office. Somehow it still felt more private there, in the dim and the mildew, than discussing semiannual reports and opportunities for interdepartmental bonding events on his ivory couch. 

Having Beelzebub in his home once a month had come to feel routine, comfortable - almost intimate. He still hated them, of course. Their buzzing, their sores, the way the odor of fermenting fruit lingered behind them. The flies. The way their odor didn't linger long enough. The way they barked, and how his heart rattled in response, as if it came untethered in their presence. 

Today, just as they were wrapping up, he'd noticed a stray hair on Beelzebub's shoulder, and leaned in to brush it away. 

His foot still ached from where they had jammed their boot heel, while buzzing, "Hands to yourself, prick."

He thought they'd almost softened for a moment at his yelp of pain, before adding, "Fucking warn me next time."

Beelzebub had left several minutes ago and Gabriel found himself standing near their usual seat, when his foot twinged with pain. Surprised, he bent to rub his at his arch, catching the lingering scent of cheap wine _Or_ _was it vinegar_? that followed Beelzebub around, and felt a jolt of sensation from an unexpected quarter. 

Standing, he brought his hand to his crotch, and groaned. He knew how to have sex, of course. Before the first war, he'd been more carefree. They all had been. Experimented with their corporations, trying different configurations and pairings. Mostly, he hadn't found it to be worth the mess, miracles or no. And Heaven had, in the last couple millennia, adopted a no touching in the workplace policy, which was extended to a no touching colleagues policy (exceptions for sparring and healing practices only) - which meant no touching anyone, considering how the Nephilim had turned out. 

He sparred often and with enthusiasm, believing it was important to set a good example for how to treat his corporation. And when violations of the no-personal-touching code rose to his attention, he addressed them decisively and with the severity any rule-breaking deserved.

He very rarely made an _effort_ of this kind. What was the point? But as he felt the heat of his palm reflected back, he instinctively cupped the bulge in his trousers and gasped, sucking in a lungful of Beelzebub-scented air. 

His belt seemed to unbuckle itself and he sighed in relief as he slid his hand down past the edge of his boxers, thumbed over the head of his cock, slid down to grip himself. His own moan called him back to what he'd been doing, worry pooling in the same well that had been filling with swirls of heat a moment before. 

He had made an effort without meaning to. 

He tried to will himself to unmake it.

To no effect. 

But he knew. Miracles only worked if you really wanted them to. 

The next moment, the scent of overripe apples overwhelmed him.

"You forgot to give it to me again, you twat. I need that summary of interagency activities so I can make Dagon file it in quintuplicate." Beelzebub rounded the corner into Gabriel's living room and stared. 

Gabriel froze, one hand clearly sticky with drops of precome, belt hanging uselessly at his sides, cock standing traitorously at attention while his left thumb sat hooked in the edge of his pants. He felt his cheeks heat with shock and shame. 

Beelzebub took him in at a glance, leaned back against the wall, arms folded, and growled. "Well. Don't stop on my account."

Gabriel tried to recollect his scattered thoughts, steady his breathing, ignore the scent of autumn orchard that followed Beelzebub everywhere. 

“I said, don’t stop on my account,” they repeated, and Gabriel’s hand was on his cock again without thinking. He shuddered as he smoothed his precome over the tip and down along his length, but it didn’t last, and when the friction edged into an uncomfortable drag, his breath caught on a wince. He slowed, wondering how Beelzebub could tempt him so; he thought demons’ powers didn't work on high-ranking angels. 

"Spit."

"What?" came his rough-voiced retort. 

"In your hand, you moron. For slick. Honestly, don’t you even know how to use your own anatomy?" 

He did, of course he did. And they were right, his hand glided now, and as he pulled, shifted, found a rhythm, he remembered the sensation. But it had never been this intense before, not even buried deep in another angel's form. He’d never felt so undone as he did standing there, braced on his wide-spread legs for balance, shirt rucked up over his abdomen, Beelzebub's eyes on his whenever his lashes fluttered open, their own lips barely parted as if their breathing, too, was coming in unsteady gasps. As his breath hitched, caught, the white-heat rose up, and he was engulfed by it, coming in ragged bursts on his chest, his sofa, stray drops reaching the floor. After the sparks behind his eyelids cleared, he opened his eyes to the realization of what he had just done. 

"Well.”

Gabriel suddenly felt smaller than he ever had in his entire existence. He glanced down at his sticky hand, his flagging cock, back at Beelzebub. "What did you…" he tried to ask, words failing him. 

Beelzebub uncrossed their arms, peeled themselves away from the wall, stood in front of him. Close enough to touch, close enough for him to feel their heat, to think about how those cold, sharp medals, the cool satin sash would feel pressed up against him. Two heads shorter than him, they filled his field of vision; he felt dwarfed by them as they reached out, dragged one finger across his chest where a streak of white clung to him. 

They rubbed the come between their forefinger and thumb, brought it to their nose, and sniffed. "What did _I_ do? What did _you_ do, you mean," they said, casually turning to leave. Beelzebub paused at the threshold to add, "And don't be late for our meeting in two weeks. My turn to set the agenda." They didn’t turn back. The tips of their black tailcoat disappeared behind the door. 

Gabriel didn't go into the office for the rest of the day. He took a very long, very cold shower, miracled himself into his workout clothes so he wouldn't have to see the boots in his closet, went for an unusually punishing run, and tried to forget. 

He failed.

He ran until his legs burned and his lungs filled with fire, pain drowning out his thoughts. 

He weighed the idea of meeting up at the practice ground with Michael to spar, but the thought of someone touching him left a greasy feeling in its wake.

Even his corporation had limits, and after he his arms and legs had turned to jelly and he dragged himself into the shower, leaning against the wall to stay upright, his thoughts came pouring back. So many millennia of strength and determination, of righteous conduct, and yet he’d been weak, susceptible. Exhausted, confused, his thoughts shied too close to the feelings of intense longing stitched in with those feelings of weakness, of surrender, and he steered away, viciously scraping at his skin with a loofah that had not been so harsh moments before. 

Beelzebub’s comments from weeks ago surfaced: _not an angel._ They were right. They were. Angels didn’t want these things, didn’t feel these things, didn’t surrender to lust. It couldn’t be him, couldn’t be his fault, so what the Hell was going on? 

Laying back on his bed, fatigue weighing him down, he recalled the electric feel of Beelzebub telling him not to stop. His hand almost drifted down between his thighs before he smacked it on the bed, realization coursing through him. _Temptation._ That’s what happened, that’s what was going on. It was Beelzebub. He should have suspected them all along, been on guard for something like this. _How dare they?_ It was in a demon’s nature to pervert, to twist, to warp feelings to their own ends. The anger thrilling through him drove him to his feet, weak or no, and his desk, where he furiously sketched out a memo. 

How many other angels might face this? He wasn’t the only one paired with a demon to build rapport between their domains. They needed guidance, his guidance, on how to maintain appropriate boundaries when interfacing with the legions of Hell. How to stay on guard for temptations of all kinds - a reminder of the angelic virtues and their obligation to hold fast to purity. Outline finished, he swayed at his desk for a moment, before dragging himself back to crumple into bed. 

When he woke, he saw the memo. Alert, and with the clarity of fear, he crumbled it to dust between his fingers, atoms dissolving into nothing. Someone would ask him to explain why he thought the memo necessary and what would he say then? No. Best to address it directly with Beelzebub. 

No, not Beelzebub. He would address this with _The Prince of Hell_ , and keep a close eye on his inferiors from here on out. 

* * *

As soon as they had left Gabriel's home, Beelzebub had clicked the door shut behind them and leaned against it for a moment, breathing heavily. They looked at the come on their fingers, considered tasting it. It vanished. They stood up, tugged their coat into alignment, and sloped off. 

Tormenting Gabriel had started off as a bit of fun. A distraction in a repetitive, apparently endless existence. Payback for having to see his vapid, insufferable face every two weeks for Satan knew how long. 

But seeing him wrap his fingers around himself, barely remembering how to jerk off, eyes fluttering closed and ears pink with shame and lust…Beelzebub couldn't shake that image, couldn't watch him just gasp as the drag of his palm grew almost painful, couldn't ignore the tightening around his eyes or the way he paused to catch his breath. 

Didn't even remember to spit on his own hand. What a fucking idiot. 

And he looked so terribly, absolutely wrecked after. They weren't used to that. Souls destined for Hell didn't generally know how to be vulnerable until they'd been carefully picked apart for at least a year. And they didn't, as a rule, retain enough sanity to express anything as cracked-open as Gabriel had. Maybe demons of lust saw people more vulnerable, desires bared to the naked eye. But Beelzebub hadn't seen someone they actually knew well look quite so raw, so open, since… _like Heaven am I going to keep thinking about this._

Face set, they strode ahead, making the labyrinthine turns to their office with barely a thought. When they got there, Dagon better be waiting and had Heaven to pay. 

It didn't really matter what they had done or not done. What mattered was the yelling, and Dagon's face: closed, resentful, familiar. 

And then maybe Beelzebub thought they would check in on the sweatshop owners’ souls. It had been a few weeks, probably. About time to contort and secure them in new positions. Beelzebub might focus on their fingers this time. Something meticulous, that was the ticket. Get them out of their head. 

Someone out of their head, anyway. 

* * *

Two weeks had provided Gabriel with both clarity and determination. He strode confidently into Beelzebub's dank, decrepit office, ready to explicitly declare how inappropriate it was for a lowly demon to use their demonic powers on him. He had thought on it long and hard, training after work each day to fall into an uneasy sleep, rare dreams laced with anger, lust, fear. He knew what he needed to say to set his mind at ease, and would not fail.

“How dare you even think to defile an angel of the Lord?” he fumed the minute the door shut behind him, eyes gone violet with rage. “To sully one of Hers, an Archangel, with your vile tricks? It’s low, even for you, who could go no lower than here, Prince of the Fallen _._ ”

Beelzebub, eyes closing in like a trap, drawled, "Oh, is it?"

"Yes. Highly inappropriate and deeply unprofessional." His heart crawled into his throat while he claimed, "I won't stand for it." 

"What," they asked, "exactly am I being acuzzed of?"

"Don't play the innocent. It's ludicrous, coming from you, and I won't be fooled into your temptations again." 

"Is this about last time?" Beelzebub asked. "Of course it is. Because you couldn't possibly accept responsibility for your own desi -"

"Responsibility?!" Gabriel leaned down, palms on their desk, almost nose to nose with Beelzebub. "That's rich. A fallen angel, lecturing _me_ on responsibility."

"At least I know what I want when I want it. I don't fucking pretend I'm some pure motherfucking paragon asswipe who doesn't even remember my briefing on demonic temptation from four months ago. And I didn't have to tempt you, you twat."

"Of course you did, it's in your nature - the inherent weakness of the Fallen. I should have expected it. I shouldn't have expected you to be able to resist."

" _I_ should have been able to resist? You wanted it yourself. Fucking face it. Or don't, I don’t fucking care. But you started it. And you wanted it. All by yourself. You fucking _wanted_ me. Wanted me watching you, telling you what to do while you got yourself off all over your stupid white apartment."

Gabriel's eyes felt hot; he tried to form words that wouldn’t come. _Why did his eyes feel hot - what was forming in his throat - why did his corporation always betray him around this worthless demon?_

But Beelzebub wasn't finished. They bit out, "Demonic temptation only works when you want it already anyway." They slumped back in their chair. "Get out."

Gabriel, faith in his own purity rocked for the second time in two weeks, felt their next shout in his bones. 

"I said get out!" they roared.

So he did. 

* * *

Beelzebub sat in their office and fumed for a long moment as Gabriel’s stupid, heavy, obvious footsteps faded. _Well fuck him._

They bunched their hands into fists and slammed them onto the desk. Their (long-cold) coffee sloshed out onto their papers and an unruly stack of folders fell to the floor, revealing a single bright white page that almost glowed in the gloom. 

_Play nicely, children. Perhaps if you spoke to one another more, you’d be less keen to go to war._

_Love,_

_Mother._

_P.S. Of course I haven’t forgotten you, dear._

Beelzebub stared, heat pricking at the back of their throat, and snatched the offending letter up to shove it in their bottom drawer. “Dagon!” they shouted, and when an answer was not immediately forthcoming, “Dagon, get your diseased carcass in here!”

Dagon, reticence in every step, peered into the room, took in Beelzebub’s expression, and bowed. “Yes, my Lord?”

Beelzebub growled. Dagon waited: head bent, the picture of obedience. 

“Who is taking care of our most recent oil executive today?”

Raising their head just slightly, Dagon said “Samael.”

“Fine. And where are they?”

“Hall G, corridor Z, subsection 4.”

“Excellent.” Their chair squealed over the floor as Beelzebub pushed their chair back. “If anyone comes to see me, don’t tell them where I am.”

“Yes, my Lord.”

“And pick up this office - it’s a mess in here.”

“Yes, my Lord.” 

Beelzebub sighed, collected a whip that had been coiled neatly on a hook on the wall behind their desk. Dagon noticed it, blanched even under their greenish hue, and bent their head again. Beelzebub, catching the path of her gaze, grimaced in satisfaction. Whatever they thought they had felt before with Gabriel wasn’t real. This was real. Fear. Punishment. Obedience. 

As they stalked towards the souls waiting unknowing for them in corridor Z, they tapped the braided coil thoughtfully against their side, the smell of leather and oil faint in the miasma of Hell’s odors. 

Nothing quite like a good whipping to get focused, and nothing better than a singletail for it. 

To choose a target, wait until the right moment, time it with their breaths so that they couldn’t hold on to any semblance of control, send the end speeding through the air to execute the mark. 

Or to allow the victim enough time to relax, to sag against the post, while Beelzebub stood so silent behind them they couldn’t know whether it was finally over or just a pause. And then the crack, the cry, lines laid over one another in any pattern Beelzebub wished. 

Exquisite. 

* * *

Gabriel barely recalled walking back to Heaven, the escalator ride a blur. He rebuffed Sandalphon’s attempt to get his attention when he passed him in the corridor, and tried to stick to the lesser-used paths between buildings. He stopped by his office just long enough to remember he still hadn’t been able to fill his assistant’s position, even since he moved his meetings with Beelzebub out of his office. Wrote out a note to post on the door, indicating that he would be out of the office until further notice. 

Slinking into his living room, he paused for a moment by the couch he’d carefully avoided sitting on for nearly a month. 

He opened the door to his closet, feeling as if his thoughts and hands were both moving deep underwater, weight pressing in on him from all sides. He slid out of his jacket, slipped his shoes off, untied his tie, settled everything into their proper places. Fabric fell into perfectly tidy, pressed lines the moment his clothing touched hanger or drawer; shoelaces curled into neat bows. 

He dragged on sweatpants that had never been sweaty, a t-shirt that smelled of nothing at all, and lavender socks with a pair of miniscule, embroidered wings at each ankle, before collecting up his polishing supplies. He flipped the lid, examined the contents. He took comfort in the perfect fit of each of the tools in his kit: leather conditioner, brushes for applying polish and buffing, tin of saddle soap for shoes that had never dared to get dirty, lint-free rags redolent of polish but free of stains. 

Most angels had given their uniforms up to central storage when millennia passed without a war. Gabriel’s uniform still hung in the back of his closet, sealed neatly against dust or insects (as if any would dare enter Heaven). His uniform boots certainly didn’t need the care that base matter required, but Gabriel had never fully adjusted to a purely civilian role. He never quite felt real when he wasn’t training to the point of occasional injury, when he wasn’t pushing his corporation, and even his ethereal form, to the edge of his pain tolerance. 

On assignment briefly during one of the Earth’s wars, he had encountered men meticulously polishing their gear. He’d stood in the corner of a canvas tent, captivated by the sight of a young soldier following the same steps that Gabriel now followed whenever the burdens of command loomed too large. In the midst of all the horror outside the tent - the mud, the filth, the death and dying - that soldier had seemed at peace. Gabriel had been utterly thrown by the idea that tending to base matter could produce a feeling like that, and one that he would only very privately admit that he craved. 

And now sometimes, though he didn’t always know it was bothering him until he had shined every last boot, he turned to the task of bootblacking when God’s silence had grown unbearable. Other angels, he knew, grieved the loss of Her presence, Her love. 

He didn’t relate. But over time, and through the quiet, meticulous work, he had come to understand that his grief derived from losing the only being who had ever really seen him, however terrifying Her gaze. 

He had tried to explain the merits of bootblacking as a tool for self-understanding to a fellow angel only one time. Michael’s disbelief and her party line disdain for “unnecessary manual labor performed on gross matter” sufficed to keep his pastime a secret. From everyone. 

Until Beelzebub. 

Clicked closed, he tucked the case under his arm and took a steadying breath. _I won’t let them ruin this for me,_ he thought, and ran his fingertips consideringly across the toes of some of the boots. _Not the complicated ones today_. He skipped over the specimens with spiked toes and contrast stitching and selected a pair that looked practical in every detail except their mirror shine. He gathered one into his hands, sank back onto the upholstered bench and, out of an abundance of caution, gestured behind him for the closet door to close and lock. 

With another thought, the high shine of the boots in his hand dulled, streaks and light scratches covering their surface. He gently removed the laces and set them aside in a neat coil. Used a conveniently appearing bowl of water to moisten one of the flannels and smoothed it over the surface, leather going darker and then duller as the moisture seeped in. He cracked open the saddle soap with a twist of the built in key and applied it in orderly swirls: across the toe, around the heel, up close to the eyelets. He gave the second boot the same treatment while the soap soaked into the first: damp cloth, neat circles of creamy soap rubbed into the leather, set aside on a towel while he cleared the film from the first. 

He worked meticulously: brushing the polish on, applying, removing, buffing. More polish, a wet cloth, fine layers of waxes and dyes building up mirror-bright. Always moving in tidy circles, breath slowing, evening out as he moved on to another pair. While he cleared the foggy film of saddle soap from the fourth boot, which was resting in his hand with the lug soles clearly visible, the image of Beelzebub’s booted feet arose in his mind. He felt a clench in his gut, a betraying stir of feeling between his legs (quickly suppressed), and paused, cloth held as still as the rest of him as awareness flooded in. 

They hadn’t lied. They really hadn’t. He didn’t understand how, or why, but Beelzebub had known what he had not. _I am such an idiot_ , he thought, and remembered the way their eyes had flashed today. He recalled the dejected, furious set of Beelzebub’s shoulders when they told him to get out. 

And their intent, earnest gaze while he stood, coming undone, in his living room two weeks prior. _I am a damned fool,_ he thought. 

While he polished, and tried to master his suddenly erratic heartbeat and the stinging in his eyes, he tried to think of what to do next. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our disasters start to figure some things out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh hey! Look, it's definitely explicit now - and we're earning some of the other tags in the bargain. Those of you who have commented, you already know how floored I am by your appreciation. Thank you!!

In lieu of Beelzebub at his door two weeks later, a letter, flaming at the corners, dropped into existence on his desk. 

_Beelzebub is unavailable today. They do not send their regrets. - Dagon_

He did not write back. 

* * *

At their usual time, Gabriel stood at the closed door, facing the crown above Lord Beelzebub’s name placard: tarnished and barely visible in the anteroom's half-light. Behind him, he felt Dagon’s eyes boring into him. “You again?” she’d asked, and Gabriel had only shrugged. 

He tapped at the door. 

No answer. 

He looked back to ask Dagon “Are they out? Or in a meeting?”

Dagon scowled. “They don’t have any other meetings scheduled.”

He knocked a little louder, tugged a thick leather folio to his chest. And waited. 

As he raised his hand to try one more time, the door opened inwards so sharply that he nearly lost his balance. 

“The fuck are you doing here,” Beelzebub hissed. 

Gabriel noticed that they didn’t look very good. Well, looked worse than usual, anyway. “I checked with Dagon.” Beelzebub raised an eyebrow. “To be sure you were free.” 

Beelzebub shot Dagon a look past Gabriel’s shoulder and looked pleased to see her quail in response. “We’ll address this later, Lord of the Files.” They turned, walked back to their desk. Sat down. “Well. Are we meeting or not?”

He would have rather faced an oncoming battalion of demons than the conversation he’d planned. He went inside, closed the door gently behind him, and sat. 

Beelzebub just crossed their arms and glared. 

“I’m sorry we weren’t able to meet last week.”

Beelzebub loosed a disdainful laugh. 

He reached into his folio to withdraw the reports and agenda he’d carried with him. “I know you’ve been wanting to see more detailed information about angelic missions and priorities. I’ve considered your clear commitment to this interagency partnership.” He heard another laugh from Beelzebub, more a disappointed huff of air than anything. “And I wanted to make my own, ah, commitment more evident. In appreciation,” he finished. 

He offered up the report. "This has locations, general goals of our missions, rough dates. So you can compare with your own, like you asked. I still don't think it is appropriate to share current missions, but this covers the last half century or so, not including any active projects, of course."

"Of course," Beelzebub mocked, reaching out for the thick, spiral bound document. They'd been asking for this information in nearly every meeting. Gabriel saying no was as much a part of their rituals as Beelzebub calling him names. 

While handing it across the desk, Beelzebub's fingers brushed the tips of his own, and he let go, pulling his hand back into his lap. He cradled it in his other hand, as if it had been burned. Something in his midsection fluttered. He told it to shove off. 

Beelzebub flipped through the report, eyebrows raising as they scanned pages, section headings. "So. Why now?"

"What?"

"Why are you sharing this now, dickface?" 

“As I said, I examined what you’ve contributed to this...” He swallowed. “Partnership, and I felt this was owed.”

They dropped it on the desk, leaned their chair back, braced a foot against the edge of their desk, and stared at him. Waiting. 

Gabriel said, “You were right, and if we’re supposed to work together, we need to be able to openly analyze how our missions and goals interact.”

“That’s all? You just come to this realization all of a sudden? I’ve been saying that for months, you prat. Almost a year.”

Gabriel gestured, hands opening with a shrug of his shoulders. 

“Fine. Whatever. Apology accepted.”

He felt his ears go pink and prayed that he wouldn’t blush. He struggled for words. “That’s...gracious of you.”

“Ugh. Gracious. Don’t be gross.” They flipped open the report to the table of contents. “Now walk me through this stupid report.”

The corner of Gabriel’s mouth twitched up in a relieved smile, and he leaned forward to explain how the report had been assembled: what data had been included, what left out and why, and how variations on the information could be made available in different formats, if needed for interagency data analysis.

* * *

Beelzebub couldn't explain why they showed up. They almost hadn't. It certainly wasn't the clumsy, veiled attempt Gabriel had made to apologize, or the way his stupid smug expression had apparently disappeared since their last meeting. And it definitely wasn't that no matter how Beelzebub tried to get rid of the letter from God, it always somehow showed up, shining and immaculate, on their desk the next day. 

They were probably just bored. At least harassing this idiot angel brought some novelty to their unendurably long existence. 

The look of relief that crossed Gabriel's face when he opened his door to Beelezbub certainly didn't have any effect on them. Nor the way Gabriel smelled impossibly clean, like sunshine over fresh grass, or ozone right before the rain. 

"You came," he observed, and Beelzebub only made a face in reply, a sneering farce of a smile, and refrained from pointing out that them coming to this meeting wasn’t the most notable coming this room had seen. 

They sat in their usual places. Traded reports, superficial office gossip, the occasional snark. 

"So you basically just go around undoing our hard work," Beelzebub said, as they reviewed the analysis they had made with Dagon's assistance, showing the way Heaven and Hell's assignments so often intersected. 

"You're missing the point," he said, and leaning over to tap the paper in Beelzebub's hands, his cloud of clean scent wafted over them, _and was that… lilies? Did Gabriel smell of lilies?_ They sniffed. _Gross._ They took another deep sniff. Just to check.

"The same happens in reverse as well. We build economic success, right conduct, and health in a populace, and your team comes in and ruins it. Usually by leveraging greed." 

"Team," Beelzebub observed, voice rich with scorn. "I still can't believe you call it that." 

Beelzebub noticed how close he'd leant to them, cast a keen gaze at his forearm, half across their lap, his knee inches from their own. He followed their line of sight, leaned back, slid his foot away from theirs. "Well, we do work towards opposite goals, and on the same field. So." 

"Call it whatever you want. Teams. Enemies. Opposing forces. I don't know why the fuck she wants us to talk, all it does is make everything look futile." 

"We mustn't question." Gabriel said reflexively. 

"No, _you_ mustn't question. _I_ do whatever I want. And this"- they gestured at the report - "is a fucking waste of time. We go somewhere, sow discord and suffering, seed greed and doubt and hopelessness and then you turn up, sometimes months, other times only days or weeks later, and undo all of our hard work. It's fucking depressing is what it is. It's almost like we were created just to suffer. Fucking Heaven. God damn Herself." They threw the report across the room and, temporarily out of steam, up to see Gabriel looking at them. No. _No._ His eyes soft, mouth crooked up on one side. Fucking insufferable. Beelzebub snapped "What the fuck are you looking at me like that for?" 

Gabriel startled a little, eyes hardening again, leaned back and tugged his cuffs into place. "Oh _I_ get criticized for looking now? That's rich."

"Whatever. Freak. What are we going to do about this? We need to come to some kind of arrangement so we stop wasting our motherfucking time." 

Gabriel sighed. Proposed some kind of notification in advance of where each side was dispatching agents and when. Beelzebub countered, said knowing wasn't enough: they needed some way to be sure the effects they put in place wouldn't be wiped out for some period of time after setting them in motion. 

Gabriel argued. Beelzebub snapped. 

And if Gabriel's eyes grew softer as Beelzebub's language grew filthier and Beelzebub failed to scare him back into keeping to his side of the couch while he pointed to maps and charts, neither mentioned it. 

As Beelzebub was leaving, on impulse, they turned, bent to collect the report they'd thrown across the room. Gabriel had had the same impulse and they came face to face for a moment. Gabriel bit his lip, snatched his hand away from the report, and Beelzebub missed their opportunity for a biting retort. His lip looked so soft, tucked under his teeth: an unexpected distraction. 

* * *

They'd met, polite and civil (by Beelzebub's standards anyway), four more times since then. Gabriel had observed Beelzebub's growing tension, and the way they sat ever nearer to him during meetings in Heaven. How their meetings ran late even with nothing significant left to address. How he never even noticed their flies anymore, as they lay quiescent along the arm of the couch.

He knew something was brewing, but didn’t have any idea what to do about it. He tried to keep their agendas light, snappy. To keep reports brief and straightforward, like Beelzebub themself. Tried not to let his gaze linger. Not on their boots, half the time tossed on their desk as if to be displayed at the angle he could least ignore. Not on their hands, while Beelzebub gestured aggressively or cracked their knuckles, and his insides turned over. Not on the whips and paddles stored neatly on the wall behind them. 

He had seen it coming, but he was still caught off balance when Beelzebub’s always-brittle professional facade completely cracked. 

"This is practically the same agenda as last week. What the fuck."

"I don't understand the problem," he replied, knowing it was no use. 

“What is it you want?” Beelzebub demanded. “What the fuck are we even doing here? It can’t just be those goddamn letters. I know she sent them to all of us and that’s why we’re holding these Lucifer-forsaken meetings, but it can’t be that. We’ve been meeting for almost a whole fucking year and I’m tired of you wasting my time with your made up fucking agendas and your squirming in my fucking chair.”

Gabriel opened his mouth to speak, and coughed instead. When was he going to remember to bring a bottle of water with him to these meetings in Hell? He tried to focus, to manifest one. 

“Say. Something. You Fucking. Cunt. What the fuck are we still meeting for? What do you want from me, dickface?” 

Desperation served in lieu of water. He coughed out “I don’t kn...” and stopped. Nothing had prepared him for this. To be a true warrior of God was to set forth without fear or doubt, to leave uncertainty behind, but every minute in Beelzebub’s company had overturned one certitude after another, leaving only questions and thoroughly unangelic desires in their wake. 

For the first time, Beelzebub looked not angry but shocked. “You really don’t fucking know, do you? You absolutely helpless overgrown seagull?” They rose, circled their desk and faced him, while he sat in that stupid, impossibly small chair, intolerably close to their thighs, and tried to look anywhere else. And anywhere else but their eyes. Ok, just anywhere other than Beelzebub at all. _Fuck, they were right. What the fuck was he doing here in their quiet, shadowy office, with them right there before him, smelling of an orchard's windfalls, oversweet and stinging?_

“Look at me. Why are you looking at the wall?”

Gabriel made himself meet their eyes for a moment, but his gaze slid away, as if weighted to the floor. He felt blood pinking his cheeks. 

Beelzebub breathed a soft “Oh.” They reached out one finger, slowly, and crooked it under his chin to tilt it upwards. A soft growl. “Look at me.” So Gabriel did, and felt his hands on his thighs tremble. “Ah,” they observed, and smiled; the smile of a cat with the mouse’s tail under its paw. “What you want,” they said, voice rough-edged, “is me.” 

Gabriel bit his lip, suddenly filled with the memory of touching himself while they watched, the heat of their proximity after he came, wrecked and helpless, and without meaning to, he became acutely aware of the tightness of his trousers, the band of his underwear. 

It did not escape Beelzebub’s notice. They released his chin, leaned back a little to run an appraising eye along his form, and said,“Either admit it, or leave.”

He clutched his thighs to steady his hands.

“We finished our agenda for the week. There’s nothing else to say, unless,” and Beelzebub’s eyes settled on the bulge in his trousers, “you want to tell me the truth.” 

Beelzebub circled him: predatory, considering. He may as well have been bound and gagged and locked in the room with them for all that he felt able to move. Or talk. Or think. “I’ll make it easy,” they crooned in his ear. “If I’m right, and you want me, say yes. If I’m wrong, which is completely unfucking possible, then leave.”

Gabriel wrestled within himself, a rising urge to cry out against them _,_ but his own heartbeat pulsed in his ears and the words stuck, buried under the weight of the truth. 

They hissed. “You have to say it, Archangel. Or you leave without me laying one fucking finger on you.” 

He tried, again, to find words. None came. 

Eyes shut tight, he felt breath hot on his ear, buzzing. “Say it.” 

“Please,” he begged, voice barely a breath, and Beelzebub laughed, a throaty chuckle. 

“Good enough. For now.” 

Beelzebub was circling him again, appraising. He didn’t even try to face their gaze. He caught at his bottom lip with his teeth. 

Beelzebub leered at him. "Angels are supposed to be...obedient, right? Bend their will to a _higher_ authority?"

He nodded.

"And honest?"

"Lying is a sin," he answered automatically.

"So when I ask you if you want to kneel to me, you will tell me the truth." 

It wasn't really a question. 

His thoughts completely stalled out. Flint striking tinder, but no sparks. He opened his mouth, snapped it shut, shook his head as if to clear the mist filling in where his mind usually lived.

Beelzebub hissed. “We don’t have time for this.”

“Y...yes,” he choked out. Barely a whisper, it was half drowned out by distant shouting. 

“I can’t hear you,” Beelzebub taunted, and when Gabriel dared to meet their eyes, saw them glittering with wicked delight. “Try that again. Or, if you can’t talk, show me.”

Feeling as if each second was stretching into hours, he set his copy of the agenda on the desk with great care, stood from the chair. He lowered himself, heart hammering in his throat, to his knees, cold against the peeling tile. 

For a moment, Beelzebub said nothing and Gabriel's heart quailed. 

“You never did say what you do with those boots,” Beelzebub mused. 

Gabriel became uncomfortably aware of his stiffening cock. 

“But today, you’re going to kiss mine,” said Beelzebub, and when they heard Gabriel’s sharp intake of breath, a predatory grin emerged. “And if you’re a good little angel and do what you’re told, I’ll let you jerk yourself off in my office.” 

A damp spot started to bloom on Gabriel’s trousers. 

Beelzebub laughed, set a foot on the chair in front of Gabriel. “...well?” they asked, “what are you waiting for?” 

He couldn't recall both craving and fearing someone’s attention so keenly since God herself had walked among her creations. He remembered the enormity of God’s gaze, the way it weighed on him, flayed him open to reveal the fragile heart of him. He glanced up at Beelzebub's eyes, saw them heavy with lust, dragged his gaze back to the boot, the scuffed surface clearly in need of care, bent his head, and closing his eyes, laid lips to the dry, cool leather. 

A charitable interpreter would not call the sound he made a whimper. 

Nobody charitable was present. 

Beelzebub leaned forward, slid their fingers into the hair at Gabriel’s nape, holding him in place against them, and hissed “Now, how does that feel?”

Gabriel didn’t know when he’d started crying, but his eyes were leaking hot tears. 

“So, this is what you have to do to be good for me, to get what you want, which is to sink your hand into your shorts and wank off in front of me after I’ve pressed your face to my filthy boots, which is where you fucking belong.” They pressed a little harder, reinforced toe obdurate against his lips, then suddenly released him, his head rebounding a little. “You have to tell me. How. It. Feels.” 

He scrabbled for purchase in his thoughts, whispered, “I don’t know.” His whole body quivered with a sob.

“Oh! I get it. You’ve only kissed the one. How can you know what it feels like to kiss my boots, if you’ve only kissed the one?” They replaced the foot on the chair with the other. “Well?” they prompted, but Gabriel had already bent his head to kiss the toe, and, desire edging out his discomfort, scooted forward enough to lay two more kisses up the laces. 

“That’s better,” Beelzebub purred. “And don’t you just look so pretty wearing those tears.” They reached out and gently brushed his cheek. He leant into their touch, so soon gone, while Beelzebub lifted a single finger to their lips and tasted. “Delicious.” 

His back arched a little, and his cock brushed against the rough fabric of his boxers. The sensation pushed out an involuntary huff of breath. He leaned forward to lay his lips on Beelzebub’s boot again, nearly doubled over with the pain of separation, desperate to touch or be touched by any part of them that they would allow. But Beelzebub grabbed him by the collar, nudged his chin up to look at their face. 

Beelzebub sighed. “Such a poor, simple archangel. We’ll make it easy - for the second time today, so don’t think I’m not keeping track - does it feel good? To kiss a demon’s boots?”

“Yes,” he breathed, seeing Beelzebub’s pupils blown as wide as his must be, their desires reflected. 

“I can’t hear you.”

“Yes,” he said clearly for the first time, fresh tears falling. 

“Good,” they said, voice rough-edged. “That’s good.” They placed their feet back on the floor, circled around him, buried their hands in his locks. “But can you do better?” They tightened their hold, hairs tugging painfully delicious at his scalp. 

He bit his lip hard, breathed out his assent. _Anything_ , he thought, _for this, anything,_ and when a traitorous worry arose in his gut, it was swamped by his terrible yearning to be obedient to this Prince of Hell. 

“Tell me. Tell me that it feels good, tell me what feels good.”

The word didn’t even cross his mind before he breathed, “Everything.” 

“Everything?” The teasing note back in their voice, and sharper. “Be specific.”

He drew in a breath. “The boots, the, the..." He trailed off, thoughts fizzing.

“The, the thethethe.” Beelzebub mimicked with a sneer. 

He waved a hand to gesture at Beelzebub’s hand in his hair. "The...hair.”

“Ahhhh,” they breathed, and tugged him fiercely towards them, arching his back, the angle pressing his cock painfully tight against his belt. 

He gasped. 

“Now unzip your trousers,” they observed, releasing him. “Let’s see exactly how badly you’ve been wanting to kneel for me.” 

It took him a couple of tries, his hands having forgotten the motions, but Beelzebub showed no inclination to help, staring down at him as he wrestled with his breath and his buckle and his zipper, revealing the vulgar show of his dick tenting his pants. 

“Take it out.”

He did, saw its purple-red tip bob once, twice, freed from its confines, reached to touch it, but Beelzebub kicked his hand away. 

Beelzebub moved to stand next to the chair, close enough to touch. “Now. You did what you were told - even though you made me help you through it. But tell me, first, _Archangel_. Remind me what we’re doing here - you want to touch yourself, on the floor of my office, after I’ve just let you kiss my boots?” 

_No,_ he wanted to say. _No_ , because he didn’t want it as much as he needed it, needed their voice guiding him through this, telling him what to do, needed their hands on him. But he nodded, overcome again, overcome still. He nodded, frantically, feeling like a fool. He remembered their instruction to speak. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes.”

“Where were all those yesses earlier, mmm?” they murmured, and sat, one knee just brushing against him for a moment as they settled into the chair. Beelzebub sprawled, knees spread, one arm draped over the back of the chair - which did not seem so preposterously small with them in it. Gabriel’s heart clenched, for reasons he couldn’t even try to understand with the scent of plums left too long in the sun filling his senses. 

They just sat there, examining him for an unbearably long moment, while his breathing slowed, and hitched, and his awareness of just where he was and who he was with built in him. The flush on his cheeks deepened and he’d closed his eyes to catch his bearings, but before he had time for any real misgivings, he felt one fingernail tracing along his cock slowly up from the curls at its base, and all the air left his lungs in a moan, stopped up by Beelzebub’s other hand. “Shh. Not so loud, pigeon-for-brains. What if someone heard you?”

Improbably, his desire only swelled, fueled by Beelzebub’s palm pressed against his mouth and the thought of his moan escaping into the hall. Beelzebub sighed, laughed. “You are one kinky, slutty fucking angel.” 

Gabriel sucked in a breath. 

Beelzebub said. “Ohhh, you like that too, don’t you? Fuck.” They tangled their fingers in his hair, tugged his head towards them, lifted their hand from his lips. “You just better be a quiet slut, or I won’t let you jerk off in front of me. Is that clear?”

Gabriel nodded, mouth parted, trying to catch his breath. 

Beelzebub canted their head to the side. “I think I know how to keep you quiet. They brushed a thumb against his bottom lip thoughtfully. Gabriel felt the single point of contact thrill through him, down his spine and up through his cock. He bit back a moan, releasing a rush of breath instead. 

“So soft,” Beelzebub said, almost to themselves, and slid their thumb into Gabriel’s mouth, back out. He felt the absence of it like a wound, welcomed the two fingers Beelzebub slid in to replace it. “Suck them,” they instructed. “No teeth. And touch yourself.” 

Gabriel ran a hesitant hand along his own cock, shuddered with the keen-edged sense of building need. He moaned, quietly as he could, against Beelzebub’s fingers, and the sense of being filled, of being held, rose up in him, honey-sweet. Before he even started to register the lack, Beelzebub said, “Ah, almost forgot,” and his palm was suddenly slippery. 

“That’s it, that’s it. Fuck. Rub one out for me while you suck on my fingers.” Beelzebub’s breath hitched too, as Gabriel found a rhythm - hand pumping, finger sucking, all else forgotten in the single-minded pursuit of the heat building to a single, acute point inside him. 

“Fuck,” Beelzebub breathed, slipping their fingers out of his mouth and onto his gripping-sliding hand, stilled his hand with theirs. “Fuck.” He could hear the ragged edge in their voice, felt himself tearing apart with the delay. 

“I bet you didn’t even know how much you wanted this, did you? Fucking idiot. So hung up on being better than everyone else that you’ve been just gagging for it without a damned clue this whole time.” They gripped the back of his neck, nails digging in. “You’re never going to forget after this though. Because you’re going to beg for it.” 

He started to let loose a moan, cut it short. 

They laughed, a biting thing. “At least you’re fucking learning. Noisy little slut. If you want to come, you’re going to be quiet, but first, you’re going to beg me. Say please, little pigeon, say ‘please let me come,’ and if you’re good, and quiet, and suck my fingers nicely, I’ll let you finish. So beg me.” 

His thoughts drifted, sparked, coalesced around Beelzebub’s hand resting over top of his own hand, holding him still on his cock, tried to assemble vowels and consonants in an order that meant something. 

Beelzebub guided his hand to move up and down, just once, slowly. “Beg for it, like the slut you are.”

Desperation yielded the word he needed. “Please,” he choked out. 

“The rest,” Beelzebub instructed. “What is it you want?”

“Please, please let me come. Fuck, please,” he begged. 

Beelzebub’s breath caught, harsh in the quiet room. “So desperate. So _keen_. Well, don’t let me stop you.” They loosed his hand and replaced their fingers in his mouth. He sucked hard at the taste of sweat and oil and himself, found a rhythm, sensation driving him. 

He felt a tension coiling in his spine, huffed out a low moan around the fingers filling him, came with a shudder that started in his hips and flowed through his arching back. He slumped, forehead falling onto Beelzebub’s knee. He could have sworn their knee hadn’t been there a moment before.

Beelzebub slowly pulled their fingers out between his lips, wiped the saliva across his cheek. He felt it cooling as he breathed out, long and uneven. He righted himself, swayed a little, core unsteady. 

Beelzebub stood, sliding to the side, and offered a hand to Gabriel. He paused, staring at it uncomprehending for a moment. 

“Well, are you going to stay on your knees all day?” they asked. 

He accepted their small hand into his, braced another on the chair, and rose on legs that wobbled underneath him. He felt a lightness in his chest, a burgeoning urge to laugh, or sing. He lurched a little. Beelzebub steered them to sit and, handing him a bottle of water, sleek and clean as the ones he miracled for himself, said “Here. Drink.”

“Thank you,” he managed, grateful that the words were short and simple. 

“Ugh. Don’t make a big deal out of it. I don’t want to have to explain a passed out angel in my office.” 

Gabriel took a deep swig, igniting the tastes in his mouth, washing them down. Beelzebub touched his shoulder once as he swayed, before he leaned back. They collected the water bottle, set it on the desk, produced a damp cloth which they handed to him without comment. 

After a pause, they settled themselves back behind the desk, while Gabriel cleaned himself, pulled his thoughts together enough to miracle away the dirty cloth and fasten his trousers, his belt. Beelzebub busied themself with papers on their desk, taking notes on the back of an envelope. 

He ran a hand through his tousled hair. “So,” Gabriel said, “ah…”

“Yes?”

He had no idea what to say. He just couldn’t bear to have them sit there, ignoring him. 

“All set, then?”

Gabriel bit his lip.

Beelzebub sighed. “We both have things to do, you know. But I’ll see you in two weeks.” He didn’t think he’d ever heard their voice so soft.

It was pathetic how the idea made his heart soar. “Yes, ah, of course.” 

Beelzebub smiled. Not sure what to do with his hands, feet feeling foreign and faraway beneath him, he stood, collected his folio off the desk, and turned to go. 

“Oh and Gabriel?”

He turned his head back to look at them, asked “Yes?”

“Since we didn’t get to everything on your list, next time you set the agenda?”

He couldn’t frame a response, so just nodded.

The wolfish grin that met his nod was not reassuring.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel sets the agenda. It does not go quite how he expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plot? What plot? Porn is plot, right? And heyyyyy look - we're earning a few more tags. 
> 
> If you want to know what "efforts" Gabriel and Beelzebub may be making, check the end notes.

Beelzebub slid into the hot pool, tucked themself onto a natural ledge, breathed in the sulfurous steam, and sighed. It had been a long fucking day after Gabriel left. 

Dagon had brought them a stream of nuisances. 

They took a shift punishing a political leader who had started a war in exchange for substantial, if subtle, bribery. His tongue would grow back; they always did. Unfortunately, in this case. Mostly unfortunate for him. 

They signed one stupid piece of paper after another, reviewed reports from field agents that were marked priority. Rebuked a few lesser demons for shirking their duties with lessons they’d not soon forget. There hadn’t been any evidence of them shirking, but everyone did it. Was too much work to actually detect it. Dagon helped Beelzebub keep a calendar for meting out punishments efficiently and just unfairly enough. Boring, predictable, and nobody really cared about the rebukes. They went better than performance reviews. Most of the time. 

All in all a shit end to the afternoon. But their noon meeting? Beelzebub reached for the soap, found it where they expected it, and rubbed it meditatively in their hands, smoothed it over their arms, the back of their neck, their chest. They slid the bar along their sides, brushing the edges of ridged scar tissue on their back. Rubbed lather along their backside, thighs, the sensitive curve of their knee, between their toes. Grunting with the mingled pressure and relief, they pushed a fist into each arch for a few moments. 

They settled further into the water, felt the soap dissolving off their skin. Finally free to allow their thoughts to drift, the image of Gabriel formed in their mind, their fingers pressed against his tongue, the way he sucked them, the desperate moans that echoed around them. 

They considered making an effort. Here, in the quiet clouds of steam from an apparently forgotten natural hot spring in a small cavern at the very edge of Hell’s labyrinth, was the only place they bothered, and not often. Hell didn’t forbid touch of any kind, violent or intimate, but you never could know what someone was trying to get out of you. Most demons didn’t bother with sex and Beelzebub had found it to not be worth the risk. Besides, denied their ethereal form, nothing about their corporation had felt right since the Fall; the configurations of efforts available to demons were either baffling or unappealing. Beelzebub mostly did without. 

Still, they knew they had to do something. Seeing Gabriel kneel to them, _for_ them, made them feel too much - always a risk to take in Hell - and they had to get their shit together somehow. 

They hadn’t really believed that the idiot would ever accept that he was positively gagging for it - not just the jerking off, or the finger sucking, but to be put in his place. Just thinking of it made Beelzebub’s hips twitch. They slid their hand down across their pelvis, and with a thought, made an effort to slide their fingers in between. Slippery with the water and their own arousal, they groaned softly, thought of the look on Gabriel’s face as he kneeled, finally honest about his desire. Stroking and squeezing themselves, they could almost hear the way he had gasped as they'd threaded their fingers in his hair and pulled, recalled the feel of their fingers in his hot, slick mouth. _I need to fuck that mouth_ , they thought, and could immediately picture Gabriel’s lips streched wide around their cock. 

Their lip curled up and their back arched a little in satisfaction as their fingers moved faster - together, separate, fluttering, knowing in their bones how it would feel to grasp the back of his head and hold him fast to them. _Fucking hell, he’d cry, too_ , and they could see it so clearly, the stretched-wide mouth, shock-pink cheeks, the tears as Beelzebub used his mouth, driven by their own need. The thought of his moans half-stifled by their cock pushed them over the edge, dim cave replaced by a flash of dark-in-light, the memory of stars. They groaned out their release, settled cross-legged on the bottom of the pool, face barely above the surface, and sighed. 

It was going to be a long fucking two weeks. 

* * *

Gabriel drifted through the remaining days until he’d see Beelzebub again, punctuated by piercing moments of anxiety about his next meeting with them. Uriel had grown so frustrated with him during a meeting that they’d wrapped up early, suggesting that Gabriel go see the healers. He didn’t go. 

Nor when Michael suggested the same thing after trouncing him easily on the practice field three times in a row. He knew he should worry about what the other angels thought. Should keep up appearances. But his senses sang for the first time in years. On impulse, he had even taken a brief excursion to Earth, to go running in an apple orchard, the scent of windfalls crushing sweet and strong under his feet. 

He slept rarely, but in the quiet hours observed in Heaven, without prescribed occupation or significant challenge, he wrestled his own desire and shame alone in the night. 

His boots had never shined so bright. 

* * *

Gabriel paced, back and forth, in the permanent glow of his living room, thinking in time with the rhythm _next time you set the agenda next time you set the agenda next time you set the agenda._ He stopped, took a shuddering breath. _Fuck._

He didn’t want to risk losing the peace of his solitary boot polishing, but his experience two weeks ago left him knowing, despite misgivings, how much he wanted to sit at Beelzebub’s feet and take care of them; to take care of something simple that he could still manage to do in their presence. Even thinking of them tangled his thoughts to the point of uselessness. 

He gathered the case of supplies anyway. He tried placing them in the living room. The bedroom. The closet again. He startled at a knock at the door. He tucked the case under his arm, rushed to pull the door open, and found Beelzebub, their usual scowl painted on, only betraying their feelings with a glint in their eye. 

He paused, a moment too long, staring. 

“Well, are we going to stand here all afternoon?” they asked, and he stood back, gesturing with his free hand for them to come in. 

“Welcome.” 

“Welcome? What are we, foreign fucking dignitaries?” 

Gabriel laughed, an open sound that made new space in his chest. “Aren’t we?”

Beelzebub smirked, looked him up and down. “Maybe not so foreign.” They took up their usual seat, sprawled across half the couch. “What’s on the agenda today, _Archangel?_ It’s your turn. In case you forgot.” 

He swallowed hard, tried to suck down his anxiety with it, held up the box. Opening the lid for Beelzebub to see, he felt like a restaurant server he’d once watched offer tea to Aziraphale. 

“I fucking knew it.” They leaned forward, pretense at nonchalance abandoned. “I knew you polished them. Fuck." 

“Well?” They gestured to their boots. “Are you going to make them shine for me?”

Gabriel hesitated. He had very very carefully tried to avoid thinking about sitting at Beelzebub’s feet and blacking their boots. 

He had not been successful. 

His breath was already catching, as he thought about it, and Beelzebub, intent, asked, “Are you going to kneel for me again?”

His insides clenched. He knelt, wondering if it would always feel like time had stopped. He was acutely aware of the brightness of the room, the openness, the odor of overripe apples, the softness of the carpet underneath him. He settled back onto his heels, opened the case. The rich, oily scent poured out, grounding him. A water bowl appeared at his right hand and he reached for Beelzebub’s foot without thinking, paused, glanced up at them. 

“Aren't you forgetting something?” Beelzebub asked, elbow leaning on their knee, gesturing to their feet with a tilt of their head. 

Gabriel had to practically prostrate himself to reach the toes of Beelzebub’s boots. He was filled with the memory of human worshippers laying themselves out in view of their gods. He pushed the thought away, kissed the toes, the creases along the sides, angled his head to kiss the laces rising up the center. 

“Mmmm. Good. Now make them shine for me.” 

Gabriel pulled away with regret. “How do you want me to…” he gestured at the boots. 

“Oh, we’re leaving them on,” Beelzebub said. 

"I'll need to remove the laces to do it properly."

"Fine. But you’re going to be very, very careful."

He _was_ careful. He untied the laces, one of them having worked into a knot; curled them into tidy coils set aside on either side. He cracked open the saddle soap, brushed the flannel over the water, squeezed out the excess, and swiped it across the cream-white soap. Taking Beelzebub's booted foot gently onto his lap, cradling the long-neglected soles, he set to his task. 

Beelzebub laid back with a sigh, relaxing their foot in Gabriel’s hands. The silence stretched out: a living breathing presence, unbroken except by the sound of cloths and brushes. It was both different and exactly like when he polished boots alone. He slipped into a nearly meditative trance, as he applied a layer of polish, buffed it to a shine, applied another, then a damp cloth, more polish, more buffing, until he could almost see his reflection in Beelzebub’s boots. Every few minutes, he glanced up, to find Beelzebub staring at his hands, his bent head. Knowing they were staring intently at him as he cleaned their boots filled him with longing and set his cheeks aflame.

He gently brushed his fingers across the leather, telling himself that he was stroking them to ensure all the polish had absorbed and no untended scratches remained, and not because he wanted his hands on Beelzebub so badly that it felt like a vice had gripped his insides, twisting at every word, every time he caught their scent. 

Gabriel carefully wove both bootlaces back into the eyelets, keeping everything precisely symmetrical, tied them in a bow that wouldn’t work loose on its own. He bent his head, lifted each foot gently in his hands, unasked, to lay kisses on them - the gleaming, black toes, the interwoven laces, the gently rumpled sides. Peeking out below their pants hem, he saw the curve and divot of Beelzebub’s ankle, protected only by fishnets. He ventured to press his lips to it, feeling newly overwhelmed, though uncertain why. _As if any of this has made sense_.

Beelzebub growled “Enough,” and he dropped their foot, only to feel Beelzebub nudge the toe of one polish-scented boot between his legs. His eyes closed and he braced one hand against the couch cushions next to Beelzebub. Fingers tangled in his hair and pulled up, shaking a sharp breath out of him. 

He felt the smoothness and pressure of the boot-tip along his perineum, his balls, before Beelzebub clutched his hair tighter and he felt the sharp ridges of their boot sole pressing gently against his cock through his trousers. He released a shuddering moan.

"Oh, you really are a slut for boots, aren't you?"

Gabriel groaned, bent his head to sink teeth into his own sweater to muffle it, the extra pull on his hair lighting up the nerves all the way down to the base of his prick. He panted, trying to take in all the sensation, hold it in, and felt the edges of something yawning open inside him.

Beelzebub moved their foot away, insisted, "Come here, you," and pulled his face to their own crotch, flat and smooth. "This is what self control looks like. But it's not for sluts like you. 

"Fuck, I bet if you had a cunt it would be dripping for me, ready to ride the toe of my boots." They ground his face against them, and he breathed them in, apple-hinted sweat-smell igniting a fresh wave of driving need. He wasn't going to last like this. 

... _but with a cunt._

Beelzebub released him suddenly, their nostrils flaring. "You didn’t." They darted their hand to lay flat against the crux of his thighs, fingers feeling out the shape of him, wet-heat already seeping through his trousers.

"Ohhh, that's nice. Fuck. Such a tight-ass angel all loose and wet for me. You’re going to get your rocks off on those boots you shined up so nice." They slid their boot back in between his legs, rubbed the laces along the seam of his trousers. He pressed back, desperate for friction.

He bent forward, gripping the couch and biting into his forearm, moaning around it as he rubbed himself back and forth along their boot. Beelzebub pulled their foot away for a moment, found the nub of his clit with their toe and he grunted. “That’s it, fuck yourself against my foot. Show me how bad you want it, want to get off on my boot. Shit, I bet you’re getting the laces damp; bet they’ll smell of your slick for days. When you kneel to kiss them next, I bet you’ll still smell yourself on them. Fuck, yes, that’s it, slutty little angel.” 

He moaned against his forearm, the feel of his own teeth digging in pushing him closer to the edge. 

“You’re going to come just like that, aren’t you? Desperate, kneeling, without my hands on you, not even touching yourself, just grinding against me?”

He tried to hold on, humiliation cresting over his desire for only a moment, but then Beelzebub grabbed his hair, pulled. The relentless ache of his cunt, the heat of shame on his face, the stinging along his scalp, the dig of his own teeth in his arm all built on the oversensitive feel of his clit against his own trousers, pressed into by the unforgiving boot, and his body rocked with the force of his orgasm: hips stuttering, back arching, moan escaping as he drew breath involuntarily. 

A sigh shook out of him and he fell forward, catching his forehead on the couch, between Beelzebub’s knees. They loosed their grip on his hair, ran fingers through the strands a few times. Gabriel, words still lost to him, felt he could stay there forever. 

Long moments passed before Beelzebub said "Because you did such a good job, we’re going to do something special." 

Gabriel, thoughts reassembling, felt a frisson of anxiety through his climax-induced haze.

"I think it's time to show you something. Just to make things clear."

Beelzebub stood, lifted him to his feet, and led him to stand next to the couch. “Stay right there.” They backed up against the nearby wall, crossed their arms and nodded. "That's it, that’s exactly the spot."

As he realized where he was standing and where Beelzebub was standing, waves of heat and sick shame rolled over him. The tears which he had told himself were an artifact of surprise during their last encounter crept in at the edge of his voice. 

"Oh no," he whispered. 

He wanted to, and he hated it. 

No, _no_ , he wanted to hate it, he wanted to hate this but he couldn’t, and he didn’t know where to look or what to do with his hands or how to keep breathing.

Beelzebub purred, nonchalant, still leaning back against the wall, arms folded. “Shhh, little pigeon. I’m here for you, I can help you. Just like I helped you last time, only better. Now. Get on your knees for me.”

Gabriel, mute, shook his head again, haltingly, felt a tremor building in him. He couldn't. Couldn't take this in, couldn't feel this again. It was too much, too much, the greasy feel of repulsion and craving straining against each other within him.

Beelzebub approached with a slow, prey-stalking pace. "I’ll help you, little slut, I promise.” 

They came to stand right in front of him, murmured. “I thought you trusted me."

_Oh fuck._

_Oh fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,_ Gabriel thought, insight blooming in him like the slick heat filling his cunt, heavy emptiness building inside. 

Beelzebub hissed in a breath. "You should see yourself. It's remarkable." 

Gabriel shook with a dry sob, tried to look away from Beelzebub, tried to _think_. 

Until Beelzebub started to undo their trousers, and there was only one place he could look. 

He didn't have to be told, just sank to his knees, felt himself start to salivate at the sight of their strapped-on cock: sleek, long, midnight-black. 

Beelzebub brushed their thumb along his bottom lip and he eagerly sucked it in, glanced up at them and they cursed, fisting their fingers in his hair. “You’re going to be good for me and suck me off, aren’t you? Right here, in this very spot, and you’re going to fucking love it, because this is what you want, right where you want to be? Isn't it?”

He closed his eyes, felt the truth of Beelzebub’s words wash over him, sucked hard on their thumb until they pulled it out with a lurid pop. His eyes opened in surprise and, looking up at them, saw them shift closer, to guide the head of their cock to slide, smooth and cool, along his cheek, across his lips. 

Eager, Gabriel parted his lips, and let them sink inside.

“Fuck. I could look at you on your knees right there every day. Just a pretty, slutty angel kneeling for me.”

Beelzebub’s words brought new spots of dark pink to his cheeks; he felt them heat, felt the rise of sickly coiling tendrils of shame, but instead of repulsing him, an electric charge ran through him. He felt an inarticulate hunger to be devoured by Beelzebub’s disdain, by their desire for him. 

He reached up tentatively to grasp the base of their cock, leaned back just enough to lick a stripe along it. He sucked it in, felt his mouth stretch and relax around it, as he mouthed over the tip, became aware of his knees pressing into the carpet, the mordant ache of his cunt. 

Beelzebub jerked a nod. “Yes, fine, fuck, _fuck_ , you’ve done this before, haven’t you.” They fisted their hand in his hair and shoved even further into his mouth as he tried to control his breathing as he bobbed over their long, spit-slick cock. 

Beelzebub grunted, twisting a lock of hair fiercely in their left hand, hips angling towards him. He moaned around them, feeling the press of their cock against his tongue, brushing the roof of his mouth. He struggled to take it as even more of Beelzebub’s unyielding cock filled his mouth with each of Beelzebub’s thrusts. 

“Oh, fuck yes,” Beelzebub bit out. “Yes, yes, but you’re going to take all of it for me. I’m going to fill your whole mouth, and you’re not going to pull away because you want it, you need this, and we both know it.” 

Gabriel felt a tendril of worry mixed in with his obscene desire, but then Beelzebub was pulling him back towards them, and he knew; he just knew he was going to gag around this beautiful hard cock and…

“Oh, no, you don’t, you little pigeon, no, you don’t.” They slid in a little further, and he felt his throat tightening, a spasm building. 

Beelzebub held very still and crooned. “See, gag reflexes are for humans, don’t you think? Not for us. These forms aren’t really us - they’re just for play - we’re just playing, so you can take it, you can take this for me, and you will, oh, _fuck_.” They growled, clutching him close to them with their fingers buried in his hair. Gabriel felt the growl vibrate in his teeth. 

They were right. Of course they were right. Without further thought, he slid his hands up along the back of Beelzebub’s thighs, pulling them even deeper, even closer.

Tears pricking at his eyes, he fought down his body’s instincts, focused on taking all of them into his mouth, to relax into the head of their cock pressing against his throat again and again. He couldn’t bear it; he couldn’t imagine stopping. The intolerable, delicious feeling of being filled beyond his ability to endure overwhelmed him and he squeezed his thighs together, felt his arousal crest as Beelzebub fucked into him and they found their own release. 

“Fuck fuck fuck I just knew you would cry,” they said and then cried out, hips shuddering a staccato rhythm as their hands fell from his head and they leaned forward on his shoulders a moment. He balanced them above him with one arm. He held Beelzebub: in his mouth, in his arms, as their tremors ebbed. 

“Fuck,” Beelzebub said, sliding their cock out of his mouth. He felt empty for a moment, but the feel of their thighs in his palms, of them hovering above him, soothed the sting of it. 

Gabriel didn’t know how long they stayed there, Beelzebub’s hands on his shoulders, his head resting on their thigh, their cock against his cheek, scattershot breath slowing and synchronizing, heartbeats calming. 

An alarm sounded, beeping soft and imperative in Gabriel’s ear. Beelzebub cursed, pulled their watch up to glare at it, and ran a hand across Gabriel’s head. “Come on, stand up. I have to go. I don’t…” They sighed. “Fuck.” 

Gabriel rose to his feet, reluctant and quivery.

Beelzebub pulled them into a brief, biting kiss that thrilled through him, more shocking than anything else the day had held. Beelzebub pulled back, panting, rubbed a hand over their eyes. Gabriel could barely breathe around the ferocious pounding of his heart against his ribs.

“Clean yourself up, you’re a fucking mess,” said Beelzebub. Their mouth worked, as if they were going to say something else, lifted their hands as if about to reach for him, dropped them, clenched their hands at their sides. “Fuck. Fuck, I have to go.” With a gesture, they vanished their cock, trousers back in place, sash aligned. 

They left, with the light gleaming at their heels, and Gabriel stood there, awash in lust and loss and bereft of words.

* * *

Gabriel had taken to avoiding his fellow angels as much as possible, having developed an inconvenient and entirely incongruous habit of daydreaming. 

He sat at his desk midway through the week, revising his inferiors' incompetent reports, when a scrap of yellowed paper dropped into existence on his desk. 

He recognized the handwriting and his heart raced. 

_I'm free for half an hour at noon on Friday. Be home. Be alone. Don't be late._

There was no signature. 

Moments later, it curled into a flash of light and crumpled to ash. 

* * *

Beelzebub charged into his living room without a pause. “I only have 25 minutes and it has been a terrible fucking day. Strip. From the waist down.”

Beelzeub saw the set in Gabriel’s mouth, his hesitation, and knew. _Fuck, why is he choosing today to talk back?_

“What the hell do you think you're doing? You tell me when to be here, you don’t even knock before you come in, and… what the fuck, Beelzebub?” 

Beelzebub was in front of him in three long strides, growling up at him. “What the fuck did you think we were going to do in half an hour? _Trust falls?_ ”

“You can’t just show up and say shit like that. You just fucking walked in and I've barely had time to…” He didn’t have words for what he wasn’t ready for. Instead he worried at his lip, gesturing helplessly. 

Beelzebub reached up to the nape of his neck and yanked him down, close enough to kiss, but just holding on, and buzzed into his mouth, "We don't have time for this, princess. I know you don't think you're ready but I fucking know how to get you there and you trust me, because you’re apparently an idiot, so suck it up." They loosed him and backed off a step.

Beelzebub said “Take your trousers off. Now.” 

Beelzebub felt their impatience crest as they watched Gabriel still hesitating, even while he was clearly hard. Beelzebub could see the obscene line of his cock through his stupid grey trousers. _Fuck. We don’t have time for this._ But he really did look worried. _Fuck._

“I can leave,” they offered. “That’s all I’ve got today. We do this my way, and fast, or I leave.” 

Gabriel looked stricken, shook his head and reached, hand outstretched. “No, no, don’t.” He sounded so pathetic, so vulnerable. Beelzebub knew they couldn’t bear to wait much longer to find out what it would take to break him: to strip off all that already crumbling cocksure persona that he carried around most of the time and find out what lay beneath. 

“Then. Take. Your. Trousers. Off,” they bit out through clenched teeth.

He stood frozen for a moment, then efficiently unclipped his belt, stripped off his trousers, let them fall to the floor. Beelzebub felt like their skin was about to ignite, to see Gabriel, always so orderly, so tidy, just drop his clothing anywhere. 

“Pants too,” Beelzebub snapped. 

Gabriel hesitated. _Again?_ they wondered. Fuck, he was slow today.

“Pants, too. The clock is ticking, wank wings.” 

He dropped his boxers, stepped out of them, nudged them aside awkwardly with his foot, worried at his lip again. _Fuck._ Beelzebub strode up to him, pulled him down into kiss that ended when their teeth sank into his lower lip

“Ahh! You bit me!” Gabriel pulled away briefly, touched his lips. The finger he pulled away had a smear of blood clinging to it. 

Beelzebub grinned, licked the blood from their teeth, saline and metallic. With an effort, they banked their devastating need and crooned, “You know, I think you talk too much. You're always talking talking talking. And everyone listens to you. The perfect angel, perfect soldier, no quarter for the weak or the questioning or the graceless.” 

“What the -” Gabriel started, but Beelzebub had pulled him back down into a bruising kiss, tasting him: the blood on his lips, the slide of their tongues. Beelzebub felt his hands come to cup the back of their head, leaned up into him, felt the thrill of the contact singing all the way along their spine. They pulled back a little and noticed Gabriel tried to steady his breathing with a long, slow exhale. 

What emerged was a whine. 

“I told you I knew what you needed.” Beelzebub leaned back a little, tugged on his tie. “Take this off. Now.” 

Without a moment's hesitation, he slipped his fingers into the knot to work it loose. 

"Give it to me." 

He did. 

“Come here,” Beelzebub gestured, and Gabriel leaned down. They knotted it loosely in the middle, and shoved the knot in his mouth, tied the ends efficiently behind his head. 

They could see the wheels turning for him, as he reached up to touch it. They could see him realize, much too slow, _always so fucking slow this one_ , that he would be able to make sounds, but nothing else.

Beelzebub strode to the couch, turned back, crooked a finger at the angel standing, looking lost in the middle of the room. “Come here.” Gabriel’s eyes had gone soft, hooded with fear and lust. 

He complied, and Beelzebub nudged a thumb down along his chin, turning his gaze directly on them. “If you are ready to admit that you want me to hurt you, kneel on the couch, ass facing me.”

Gag or no, Gabriel’s shuddering breath was audible, and followed by a muffled whimper. 

Beelzebub’s responding smile was all biting teeth and satisfaction. “I’ll take that as a yes. Kneel.” 

Gabriel climbed awkwardly onto the couch and Beelzebub stepped up, stroked light fingers down his spine. He shivered under their touch. They slid a hand between his braced-wide thighs to stroke his perineum, his balls, and he moaned through the wet silk in his mouth. Beelzebub glanced at the time. _Fuck. Now or never._

"Be a good little angel and I'll leave bruises in those colors you like so much." A whole tie drawer in violets and mauves? Who was he kidding, anyway? 

Gabriel quivered, and, realizing that they were probably already drooling around the gag, something fierce inside Beelzebub kindled, was set alight. “Brace yourself. Both hands. I don't want you falling the fuck over - I do _not_ have time for that.”

The first few smacks were tentative, by Beelzebub’s standards, but still gratifying, to feel his muscled ass give, see the quivering in his thighs, how his cock jumped and bobbed, jerking in between strokes. Beelzebub warmed up his ass and thighs, pinking them all over, before hitting them in earnest. He laid his head on his hands against the backrest, arching his neck in a delicious curve. Beelzebub felt each groan as if it were their own. “Fuck, yes, take it just like that. I fucking knew you wanted this, you dirty slut.” 

Gabriel’s muffled grunts intensified, interspersed with weak moans and stutters of his hips. Beelzebub could hear that he was close, reached their hand around his hip, gently stroked fingertips around the head of his cock, just once. He moaned. "Quiet. Unless you want your neighbors to hear. I bet you fucking do, bet you want them to hear your pathetic moans, know how weak, how needy you really are." His moans quieted, roughened, took on the tenor of sobs. He bit harder into one of his hands after a particularly stinging smack. He grunted, and Beelzebub grinned. 

They bore down with heavier smacks. Deep and thudding blows produced sounds from Gabriel that were indistinguishable as either pain or pleasure. Beelzebub's own gut clenched to see his painfully evident need, see his hips jerking in between their blows, cock too far away from anything to get friction, needing both his hands to brace himself, but so aroused by Beelzebub's blows that it hardly mattered. They used one stinging hand to pull him close to them, still hitting his ass with the other. Beelzebub sunk their teeth into his shoulder with their own hips pressed against his buttocks. Their mind filled with unbidden thoughts of fucking him just like this, of bending him over and slamming into him; they felt him shudder with the release crashing through him.

Beelzebub paused to catch their breath. They offered no such recourse to Gabriel, pulling him back at the hips to stand on quavering legs, spun him, shoved him to his knees on the floor facing them. Pulled his face up against their crotch. Now they could see how saliva had pooled out around his gag, dripping down his chin. He looked as wrecked as they felt. Beelzebub meant to press him to their boots, but just couldn’t bring themselves to. _Well fuck me_ , they thought.

They gripped the shorthairs at the back of Gabriel’s neck, tilted his face up for a good view, taking in his tear stains, the trickles of saliva collecting on his chin. Beelzebub shoved their left hand into their pants and rubbed in vicious circles, chased the threads of pain and too-much sensation, cresting and crashing into their own climax. 

When they left, they left Gabriel behind, kiss-bruised and slow-moving. 

They’d already overstayed by a few minutes. 

“I have to go.” 

They paused, as if to add something, but demons didn’t apologize. Certainly not for doing what someone else fucking wanted anyway. They shook their head, to clear it. “I’ll see you next week.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel has a penis. And then later a vulva. 
> 
> Beelzebub would tell you in no uncertain terms that it's none of your business what's under that strap-on. Who am I to disagree?
> 
> This is the second to last chapter - thank you for coming along on this wild ride. <3


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beelzebub and Gabriel find out together how much Gabriel can take, and we almost completely abandon plot for porn. Almost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter! Time to collect all remaining tags. If you're concerned about the ending, check end notes. 
> 
> I never could have managed this without thestarlitrose, summerofspock, featherxquill, or homosociallyyours

Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies and Prince of Hell, was not going to be defeated by a piece of paper. 

The paper lay mute, ostensibly inoffensive, and infuriatingly blank. Four days ago, immersed in hot water up to their neck, thoughts drifting, they'd had a marvelous idea. To give Gabriel a choice. To corner him into admitting, lucid and clear headed, just how badly he wanted to be pushed into handing over control fully to Beelzebub - and to find out how far that could go. 

_As if it wasn’t obvious._ The way that angel begged and moaned and whimpered was enough to bring any sadist to their knees. 

_Well, someone's knees, anyway._ Beelzebub tapped their pen, started to write and cursed. Drew stupid little circles on the stupid little page until the ink flowed red. They thought about the way Gabriel had looked after Beelzebub had sunk their teeth into him: kiss-bitten, his eyes wide, achingly desperate. 

Beelzebub could not or would not name the feeling that arose in them at the memory, but they knew they wanted to break him: to bring him to the limit of his strength. 

They collected a fresh sheet of paper and began to write. 

* * *

Gabriel walked up to Beelzebub’s office to find Dagon absent, and the door already half-open. He knocked softly on the doorframe

"Yes?" he heard Beelzebub ask, sharp and imperative. 

"It's me, uh, Gabriel."

"I can see that. Are you going to just stand there like a prat?"

"Good afternoon to you too," he said, pulling the door open. 

He settled himself, crossing his legs, while Beelzebub quipped, "That remains to be seen."

"Where's the Lord of the Files?"

"I sent her on an assignment. On Earth for a couple weeks. Didn't need her in my business," they said, buzzing over the word. 

They slid a piece of paper across the desk to him. Which, if anyone had asked, was hardly what he'd expected today. Nor had he expected for Beelzebub to leave the door open.

"There's two of them," Beelzebub explained. “Two agendas.” Gabriel was surprised by the tension in their voice. 

He reached out for them, realized Beelzebub had clear space on their desk to slide the agendas to him and observed "Your office is much tidier than I've seen it." 

"I've had some extra energy to spare." 

"Really?" he asked, surprised. 

"Really. I had all the extra energy I needed to yell at Dagon until she finished cleaning this place up." 

Gabriel couldn't help it. Even through his nerves and the growing disappointment as he looked down at what appeared to be a perfectly ordinary agenda in his hands, he smiled. And asked "Why are there two?"

Beelzebub snapped, "Just read them," and pulled out a nail file from their drawer to run aggressively across their fingernails, a portrait of nonchalance, just like a cat licking its paw. 

Gabriel read through the first agenda in detail, finding nothing surprising or amiss. The items all reflected a logical progression of topics to cover, included updates on their collaborative projects. There was nothing urgent in the agenda, but neither would it be a waste of time. 

He slid the first agenda under the second. For an extended moment he forgot his corporation expected him to breathe. The header, the date, the font - everything was identical to the first, but it included only one item. No subcategories, no commentary, just: 

_Find out how much the Archangel Gabriel can take before he drops_. 

"So," Beelzebub asked. "Which will it be?"

Gabriel selected the second agenda, aware of his pulse dancing in his throat, the bobbing of his Adam's apple. 

Beelzebub, expressionless, accepted it, gave it a lingering look - more than long enough to read it - and set it alight in their fingers. 

It crumpled to ash. So did the fluttering hope in Gabriel's breast. 

"Well," Beelzebub said, "let's go, then."

"Go?" he asked. 

"To my workshop. You don't think we can take care of that here, do you?"

And the well of disappointment in him transmuted, as if by alchemy, to a terrified, ungainly kind of joy. "Ah," he said, feeling foolish. He stood, followed Beelzebub out, down the hallway, noticing they moved as fast as before, but with a rigid determination different from their last journey into the labyrinthine building. 

He could feel their building impatience like a tangible thing. He was so attuned to it, to the set of their shoulders, the pace of their breath, that the cries, the screams, the muffled weeping felt somehow insulated from him, irrelevant. 

He was so keyed in to Beelzebub, to the exclusion of anything else, that when Beelzebub stopped for a moment, he paused mid-step behind them as well, even though he had room to keep moving. The abrupt stop landed his foot mid-puddle just behind Beelzebub. His foot slipped beneath him and he started to yelp, but their small hand was already on his elbow, steadying him, their fingers digging in with a fierce grip. They seemed to read his face for a moment, then cursed. 

"Well, fuck all this," they said, and with their other hand, snapped, manifesting just outside the imposing door he recalled from months ago. 

“Not to sound ungrateful, but why are we out here instead of in there?”

“Can’t use miracles to get in,” Beelzebub said. “How the fuck would I get any privacy if demons could just pop in here, unnanounced?" They stood at the edge of the open door. “Well, are you coming in? Or are you going to just stand there looking stupid?”

“You’re in a mood,” Gabriel observed. 

“What I’m in, Gabriel, is a rush.” 

Gabriel took the hint and Beelzebub closed the door behind them, heard the lock click. He remembered the lock worked only for them. “Ah, that locks - from the…

“Yes, from the inside. Yes, I’m the only one who can unlock it, and yes, I’ll let you the fuck out whenever you want. Are we good?” 

Gabriel, despite Beelzebub’s tone, was relieved. Until he took in the space around him - wide open, walled in cool, dark stone - but today the furnishings around the periphery held his attention in a way they hadn’t before. He had that sense of standing at a precipice that he had come to recognize right at the start of his encounters with Beelzebub: a fear of falling; a stronger urge to jump. 

* * *

Beelzebub had noticed what they were pretty sure Gabriel didn’t know: that ever since choosing their agenda, his eyes had taken on that dark, faraway look of a startled deer. It made Beelzebub cross, made them impatient to get Gabriel somewhere they could push him further into that place, to press until he conceded to them. 

They also caught his anxious darting glances at the saltire, the whipping post, and the mingled fear and longing as he looked towards the rack of instruments, before carefully looking anywhere else. 

Beelzebub knew that game. And how to play it. 

"We never did try those out, did we?" they asked, gratified to see him startle. 

"It didn't seem to be a good idea at the time.” Gabriel swallowed hard. 

His obvious discomfort made the beast inside Beelzebub purr with delight. "How about now?"

"How ab-" he cleared his throat. "How about now?"

"Isn’t that what we’re here for?" they said, and strode directly to the rack. They plucked out the flogger - the very one that Gabriel had called _soft_. Beelzebub rolled up their sleeve, turned to face him, and cracked it, hard, across their own forearm. 

He jumped. Beelzebub felt a new wave of lust. 

_Today. Today they would find out what a broken-open Gabriel was like._ "Come here."

Looking enchanted, or sleep addled, or drugged, he made his way over to them. 

"Roll up your sleeve," they said. 

He complied, revealing a toned forearm with a dusting of dark hairs. Beelzebub held back a hiss, asked "Ready?"

Gabriel only nodded. 

Beelzebub brushed the soft black leather strands across his forearm first, let him ease into the experience of being touched: ease into being, however fully dressed, on display. And warmed up with a few gentle thwacks, shifting into faster, sharper movements that raised a flush on his skin, the tempo of his breathing, and Beelzebub's heart into their throat. 

"Well?" they asked, "thoughts?"

Gabriel just looked at them, at their arm, and shook their head. "I… I didn't know."

"Didn't know?" What the fuck was he talking about?

Gabriel nodded, slow, considering.

"I didn't know it would feel like that." 

Beelzebub filled in the gaps of meaning with his catching breaths, his violet-dark eyes. "I've got so much to show you."

They pulled down the braided cat, a paddle, the whip; showed Gabriel what each felt like in turn. The pace of his breaths increased with every strike, and when Beelzebub managed to lay a single stinging swipe of the singletail across his arm, he gasped out a moan. _That one,_ they decided. 

Of course their own favorite would be his favorite as well. Of course. Beelzebub might have thought that God had a sense of humor, may have had some hand in all this. Except they knew better. 

"Well. I did my show and tell. It's your turn." 

"What?" He said, clearly confused. 

"It's your turn to tell me how much you want this." They moved closer to him, so close they could kiss. "Show me how much you can take." 

"I…"

"Oh not in words, princess. But with your mouth? Yes."

Gabriel glanced down at Beelzebub's crotch, licked his lips, spasmodically clenched and unclenched his fists. 

Beelzebub grabbed his scarf, pulled him down to face them. "You need this, don't you?" they breathed up at him. "Need me to tell you what to do, how to be good for me, so you can just set all your bullshit aside and _take it_ , don't you?"

He let out a breath in a sob, breathing fast and uneven. 

"Strip."

"I…"

"Take it off. All of it. This is what you came here for."

He gave an abortive nod, stepped back, rubbed a hand over his eyes. "Ok. Ok okokok," he said, sounding as if he were telling himself more than Beelzebub. He unwound his scarf, set it on the table underneath the instrument rack. He unclipped his watch, placed it on top. His shoes came off next, his sweater tugged over his head, briefly revealing his pale abdomen. He stood in shirt, trousers, and stockinged feet, took one long, steadying breath, and looked full on at Beelzebub before he pulled his shirt off over his head. Beelzebub stared, aching and hungry, as his belt and trousers and pants came off. 

At the sight of him - the curve of his torso, the line of dark hairs that curled down the planes of his exposed stomach, tracing a path to the clear evidence of how much he wanted this - Beelzebub filled with the need to tear into his unmarred flesh. 

He looked painfully vulnerable and improbably small in the arched room. He passed his hands briefly over his crotch, as if he could hide anything. As if Beelzebub would ever let him hide how his cock stood full and flushed crimson. 

"Oh," Gabriel said, and bent to remove his lavender trouser socks. 

Beelzebub said "Wait." He looked so stupid and small with only his socks on. It made their skin crawl with lust. "Leave them on."

"Leave on… my socks?" He looked incredulous, with a hint of his default supercilious gaze.

"Whatever. The floor is cold. But suit yourself." 

Gabriel looked foolishly at his feet, back up at Beelzebub, crossed his arms for just a moment and then uncrossed them, like he couldn't figure out what to do with his hands. 

Beelzebub decided they couldn't wait another moment to get their hands on him, advancing to grip his chin between thumb and forefinger. They tugged at his bottom lip, freeing a huff of air. Thumb hooked on his teeth, Beelzebub pulled his chin down close enough they were sharing the same breath. "I can see just how badly you want this. I bet you've been thinking about it all week. Wanking off, thinking about me."

A hiss of air escaped from between Gabriel’s teeth, and a fierce blush rose in his cheeks as he looked away from Beelzebub. His hips even twitched a little, body saying _yes_ when his mind tried to fuck it up by trying to hold back. 

Without waiting for his words to catch up, Beelzebub kissed him: hungry, rapacious, teeth sunk into lips, nails dug into his bare shoulder blades, scraping down his neck. He yielded to all of it: the push and press of Beelzebub's tongue, the way they moved his head, the bruising pressure, incoherent sounds escaping his mouth and flowing into theirs. They felt his hands land on their back, soft and tentative, one slowly bunching the fabric of their jacket.

It was too much for Beelzebub. They pulled back, with a last nip at already bruised lips.

"On your knees. Now," they said, unzipping their trousers. "I'm going to fuck that pretty mouth of yours as long as I want, and then we are going to find out what it takes to make you scream." 

They hadn't thought Gabriel's eyes could get wider. "Fuck," he breathed, before swaying once. "Here?" he asked, darting a look around the room, as if there were somewhere less exposed, less threatening. 

"Here. Now. _Kneel._ " Beelzebub said, and as if his strings had been cut, he folded neatly to his knees and looked up at them, breathing hard. 

"Please," cut out of him and Beelzebub let him reach for their strap-on, his hand shaking; they watched him trace along it almost reverently, as if it were a relic and he was not an angel, but a human devotee.

Beelzebub looked down on his dark head, the slope of his shoulders, felt a sense of rightness in having him here, in this room, in this realm, at their feet. "This is where you belong, you know. Down in the dark with the rest of us."

Gabriel's breath huffed out and he looked up at them, looked away. Beelzebub could see his lungs working, as he struggled to breathe.

They fisted a hand in his soft motherfucking hair and his hands fell to his sides. "Admit it. You belong here, on your knees in Hell, just like this."

"What…I," he sobbed, panting. 

"Think what you like, but She abandoned you too." They let go of him abruptly. 

"I…" Gabriel said, obviously not knowing how to finish that sentence. His eyes squeezed shut and he bent his head, sliding his hands up to clasp at the back of his neck in a movement of dismay or despair, released it, looked back to Beelzebub, frantic with longing.

Beelzebub’s own breaths were coming fast and hard. "Fuck, I am going to have so much fun with you," they crooned, and dragged one finger from the top of his stupid chiseled cheekbone down along the soft angle of his chin. 

* * *

Gabriel felt a blush creep up his neck and licked his lips. He suddenly felt queasy with the weight of his own desire. Beelzebub stripped off their sash and jacket, threw them to the ground and demanded, "Well?"

He reached for the base of their cock with trembling hands, felt blood rushing in his ears.

"And slowly, little slut, I mean to enjoy this." They tugged hard in his hair, yanking a gasp out of him.

He grasped the base of their strapped-on cock with one hand, placed the other around Beelzebub’s black-clad hips, felt the ridges of straps under their trousers, and wondered how long they'd been wearing the harness. Was it freshly miracled on or did they put it on earlier, before going to their office? Had they been sitting with it pressing up against their skin all day? If Beelzebub took it off, would it leave marks outlining the straps? A vision of smoothing those marks away with his tongue unhinged him; he felt a sudden rush of need to have their cock inside him. Have Beelzebub in him, filling him. 

He moaned, swirled his tongue around their cock, made long flat strokes from base to tip, along the sides. Curling his lips over his teeth, he sucked it in, groaning at the shape of it, the way the firm head bumped his soft palate, took pleasure in the feel of his own lips stretching wide to take them in. Involuntary moans crashed out of him, vibrating his lips along the shaft. He felt saliva pooling in his mouth and pulled off a little, moved to wipe it off, but Beelzebub stayed his hand. 

"Leave it," they said, voice husky. 

Gabriel complied and felt spit begin to drip down his chin. He sank his fingers into Beelzebub’s backside and rocked forward onto their length. He was overwhelmed with the desire to get closer, to suck them off so that they could feel him all the way through to what lay beneath the base, beneath the straps. To even think about Beelzebub exposed to him, in any way, was a breathtaking thought. He moaned afresh around their cock, staggered by visions of all of the ways they could join together.

As if his thoughts had been laid out before him, Beelzebub said, "Fuck. I can just see you, cheeks spread, my cock buried in your ass, your back arching like the desperate slut you are," Their breath stuttered as he slid up and down the shaft, and their hips jerked in response, surprising him into a half-gag, spit oozing over his chin. 

"Ohh, maybe I was wrong about that gag reflex," they hummed, teasing. "Let's say you keep it this time, see how good you can be for me without any ethereal help this time."

Eyes stinging, gut roiling with need and humiliation and fear, he felt them start to move, slowly, inexorably, his eyes filling with tears, his mouth and hands full of them, breathing erratic.

"Shhh, shhh, you can do this, you can do this for me because you want it, you want me to hold you here and fuck your mouth until I come, you dirty slut," and they groaned, lewd and unchecked, louder than he'd heard them before. The sound rushed straight to his cock; he felt come seeping out of it, cool against his flushed too-sensitive skin. Fuck, could he come like this, untouched, knees bruising on the floor? He moaned around Beelzebub's prick as a stray breeze brushed over him and he shivered. 

Without warning, Beelzebub pulled out all the way, rubbed their cock on both his cheeks, leaving his own spit all over his face to mix with his tears. It bumped hard against his lips to press back in. 

He felt the saliva cooling on his burning cheeks, the thick length of their cock slide across his tongue, pressing imperatively at the back of his throat. He breathed with an effort, fought not to gag, but they were so big, so much, driving out and back into his mouth, back into his throat. His hands on their muscles trembled, his skin breaking out into goose pimples as he tried to accept the sensations overloading him. 

Above him, hands fisted in his hair, Beelzebub grunted, "Fuck yes. Fuck. Take it in, take me in you desperate, needy slut, this is what you've wanted since that first day in your living room, I knew it."

He hadn't thought he could possibly feel more shame, but now it coiled inside him, a writhing mass, somehow waking his lust, his need to be touched, to be used, and he sobbed around their lovely cock to be given this, given all this.

Beelzebub increased their pace, gagging him every few strokes, as saliva and bile and tears spilled out of him. With a final groan and a stuttering burst of thrusts, the strap’s ring brushing his nose, Beelzebub shook with their own climax. They leaned their forearms heavily on Gabriel’s shoulders, cock still sheathed in him. 

"Oh, fuck," they said, pulling out, and looking at the wreck of his face. He coughed to the side, drool spilling, and glanced back up to see Beelzebub smiling, satisfied. 

He breathed, hard, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Beelzebub sucked in a breath. 

"That was…. Fuck. I'm going to hurt you," they sang, brushing their hand through his mussed hair. "I’m going to hurt you much more than you can imagine, and you are going to take all of it, you greedy, greedy slut." 

Beelzebub said, "Stand up.”

Standing, Gabriel became aware of his raw reddened knees, felt his nakedness anew. He felt an intense need to shield himself from their gaze, and the greater need to stand before it. 

Beelzebub turned efficiently to grab the flogger, hands hesitating over the rest of the items he'd felt against his arm and selected the coiled whip. His insides turned liquid with heat, fear curling at the base of his spine. _Fuck. Oh fuck, I am so screwed,_ he realized. 

"Come," they told him, gesturing offhand to follow them, obviously knowing, just as he knew in his bones, that he would. He followed, and the lewdness of his cock bouncing as he walked across the open expanse of the room served as an inescapable reminder of his situation. 

They stood in front of the saltire, looked him up and down, and said, "Right. So. This is how it's going to go. _You_ are going to stand here, with your hands against this, not fucking moving a muscle, while _I_ am going to hit you until you can't fucking take any more. And then you are to lift your hands off, or drop to your knees. Do you understand?" 

His tongue, so wet a few minutes before, scraped dryly at the roof of his mouth and he coughed. 

Rolling their eyes, Beelzebub produced a bottle of water: slim, sleek-black and dewy with condensation. As he put it to his lips, he was powerfully reminded of their cock. The smirk on their face when he finally lowered the bottle suggested that had been their intention. 

"Yes," he said. "Yes, I understand."

Beelzebub stepped closer, and just as the first time, he couldn't help glancing down at their boots, though now they shone. 

They noticed. Of course they fucking noticed. 

"Ohh, but I forgot something, didn't I?"

He tried, but failed to keep from glancing down at Beelzebub’s boots, tried to look in their eyes instead. But their gaze had steel in it, and it cut. They murmured, incongruously soft, "Ask nicely, and you can kiss them first." He wondered if this would always feel like falling, over and over, even in the same hour, to bend himself to them. 

He burned to form the words, drew on strength from some more knowing part of him. "Please..." he begged, words falling like stones: bearing him down, buoying him up, "May I?"

They hissed a rough puff of air between glinting teeth. " _May I_?" they asked. "You're going to need to say that more often. Now get down there, they aren’t going to kiss themselves." 

He knelt, felt the cold stone scrape against his already sore knees, lowered his hands to the cold floor, and kissed first Beelzebub’s left boot, then their right, once each, his breathing slowing, sense of self melting away a little. He hummed a quiet sound of satisfaction, heard Beelzebub's chuckle. "Would you look at that? An angel who likes to kiss boots. While you're down there, though, I think they might be a little dusty. How about you clean them off for me? Mmm, just a little?"

"But," he said, sat back on his heels, face turned upwards, "I don't have any kit with me. Do you want me to…" He gestured, the sketch of snapping fingers. 

Beelzebub bent down, almost nose to nose with him. "You have that lovely tongue," they said, "don't you?"

He went hot and cold all over with the suggestion. Started to shake his head no, slowly, before they grabbed his chin, swiped a thumb against his still-damp lips. Automatically, he opened for them, felt the thumb slide inside, pressing down on his tongue, pulling his jaw open. "Say no again, and I either gag you, or you leave. Understood?" 

He nodded abruptly, felt their thumbnail scrape the roof of his mouth as he did it, his chest convulsing.

"Good."

He bent, opened his lips, and licked tentatively at their boot, then at a sound of disapproval from above him, with intent. The surface, glossy black, tasted of dust and acrid polish, and the scents, of leather, of soap and polish assaulted him. The scents of comfort and peace mingled with the sensations bearing down on him here and now: his backside cold, exposed, his bruised tongue running along the top of the toe, the ridged edges of stitching, the laces rough against his nerve endings. 

"That's more like it," they said. "Now the other."

More of the same feelings rose in him, but different too; having heard the pleased purr replace their biting disappointment, he felt himself sinking further, easing languorously into the space inside him that he was coming to know. He pulled back to take a breath, rolled the taste of leather and oil over his tongue. But then Beelzebub’s hands, tangled in his hair, pulled him up part way and he scrambled to his feet. 

"Get your hands on that," they said, gesturing to the ‘X’ of polished wood secured to the wall next to them. 

He did as they directed, realizing in order to stand stable, he had to spread his legs apart, to brace himself. There was no reason that should make him feel more exposed. 

Telling himself that didn't help. 

He heard their sharp footsteps pull up behind him, felt their breath hiss into his ear. 

"Remember how you said you thought this would be soft," they asked, and he felt the strands of the flogger sweeping over his back, tickling, soothing, and nodded, too many times, feeling unhinged. 

"Well." Beelzebub said, and he heard them step back a couple paces. "Let's rethink that, hmm?"

The first few blows felt almost soothing, thudding along his shoulder blades, his ass, in a repetitive rhythm. Then they picked up speed, blows lain with ever increasing force. When Beelzebub hit his ass now, tendrils of the flogger stung against his exposed thighs. 

"How. Is. That?" Beelzebub asked. They punctuated each word with a thud to his back, waking lines of pain and sensation that curled into his spine. Sensations that made their way directly to his cock, which was growing painful itself now, aching to be touched, to be gripped, to brush up against anything but the cool air. 

He moaned, a broken sound, and Beelzebub paused, came closer, breathed into his ear.. “Down here, there's no one to hear you but me, angel. Make all the noise you want."

His neck broke out into goose pimples; his whole back rippled, arched, to think of his voice ringing in this place, and to hear them, to feel them so close. 

He thought he had adjusted to the thunk of leather against his backside, but when they started again, he had lost the shape of the pain, and he started moaning in earnest. He heard his cries echo around the room, taunting him, as Beelzebub laughed and their laugh bounced off the walls, off his ears, a staccato cacophony of mocking mirth. 

Beelzebub, still swinging, still striking in a regular rhythm, said, "You should see yourself.” 

They paused. 

Beelzebub snapped their fingers and there, on the wall before him, was a full length mirror. He could see himself, almost grotesquely hard, face shining with his own spit and tears, pupils full blown under heavy lidded eyes, and Beelzebub, standing behind him, fully clothed, cuffs rolled up, hand on one hip. He shook with his sobs and squeezed his eyes closed to shut out the sight. 

"Ohh, don't pretend," they said. "Don't forget we can’t both see how much you love this, how hard you are. I bet you're going to come just like this today, aren’t you?" 

Beelzebub returned to their task with a new fervor, swinging at a punishing pace. Gabriel's right hand clenched once, involuntarily, and pulled away from the post. 

Beelzebub stopped, said "Yes?" and waited. 

He shook his head, moaning wordlessly, placed his hand flat on the wood. Then started again, pouring unbearable sensation across his buttocks and back. 

He had never, for thousands of years, felt so loved. 

The strikes moved lower, leather tips stinging his thighs, heat blooming in their wake, as he gasped out his need. He sobbed as stray threads found their way to curl around his thigh, his hip, once felt the air move perilously close to his prick, and knew he was lost at the very thought of a streak of pain there. He came violently: hands convulsing around the bars of the saltire, spending himself along his chest, his thighs, the stone floor. 

And then Beelzebub was behind him, one hand on his shoulder, keeping him on his feet. He leaned in to the contact, shaky with his need for it. 

"Fuck, Gabriel, _fuck_ ," they said, and if he hadn't just come he would have all over again to hear them say his name that way. 

He took a long breath in, tried to stabilize his racing heart, until Beelzebub asked, "Is that all you have?" 

It was a soft question, a quiet one, and he knew he could say yes. 

And then he would go home, and maybe they would do this again, eventually. 

He did not want to say yes. 

He wanted to say, "No, I can’t leave, not now, when I’m so close to -" But he didn’t even know what that meant, and he was too far gone to do more than feel, to shake his head, violently, until his head spun and he stopped. 

"No, you can take more, or no you can’t," they asked, standing _so close so close so close_ to him, one hand brushing softly along his side. "Which is it?"

Through bruised lips, hoarse-voiced, he said, "More." 

Beelzebub sighed with the satisfaction of a carnivore about to sink in their teeth. 

“That’s it, that’s my little archangel,” they said. 

At the sound of Beelzebub's words, Gabriel whimpered so hard that he convulsed as the sound shook from him. 

Beelzebub smiled behind him, a slow, wicked slant. 

“So strong to take all of this from me." They ran a hand possessively around the edge of his hip. He leaned into it without meaning to. He shouldn't - couldn't want this. Shouldn't want to curl into them, to burrow into whatever touch they offered.

"So depraved, to want to be scourged by a demon.”

The words struck home, harder than any blow yet, and he wailed, heard it echoing back at him, felt their soft chuckle behind him. 

“What a delicious sound. Let’s see if we can find more where that came from, mm?”

Unthinking, he lifted a hand from the plank to cover his mouth as if it could hold in the sounds clamoring to get out. 

Beelzebub said, “What did I say about your hands?”

He couldn’t help it, couldn’t help it, and his frame wracked with sobs. 

“I’ll ask one more time - do you have to stop?” Their gentleness was edged out by impatience. 

“No, no, please.”

“Please what?”

“Please don’t stop.” 

Beelzebub sighed. “OK, let’s make this easier.” 

He heard a snap, and then a clink of chain, raised his head to see thick black cuffs hanging from chains attached to the boards he’d been clutching. Panic stirred in him. He took an uneasy half step away, bumped against Beelzebub who placed one hand back on his hip and allowed him to lean into their small chest. 

“I’m not going to make them tight, little pigeon. They’ll only make it easier for you to stay still, to stay up. See?” They shifted him back into position, gestured up at the cuff, already fastened shut with a substantial brass buckle. 

He slipped his hand in, met the softness of fur lining them, realized he could clutch his fingers up above the cuffs, or lean on them if he was at the right angle. It shouldn’t have been comforting. 

But it was. 

He slipped his other hand in, heard Beelzebub say “Good little pigeon, that’s good.” Breath hot on his flaming red ears, they added “You can scream, if you want. Nobody will hear you. But don't pass out on me because you're too stupid to know when to fucking yield.” 

They pulled away, and the muscles along his exposed back rippled with his shiver. He squirmed a little, just noticing the radiating burn along his back and thighs. 

He heard Beelzebub’s voice, from farther behind him this time, and couldn’t restrain the shiver that ran through him. They said, “This is going to be a bit different.”

And then he heard the crack of the whip. And flinched. 

_Oh fuck me oh fuck oh no_ , he thought. 

Beelzebub said, “You’re going to need to hold still for me. Understand?” 

Gabriel nodded, croaked out a “yes.” 

“You better,” they said, and he felt a sharp impact ring out across his already raw red back, and hissed out a curse. 

“Mmm, I don’t think I heard that,” Beelzebub said, and the second stroke ran crosswise over the first. He cried out, a thin sound he barely recognized as his own. 

“Ahh, there it is, darling. Be as loud as you like. Nobody will hear you.” 

Beelzebub picked up the pace, took on a steady, even rhythm. Heat bloomed in his back again, haze clouding his thoughts. His perception narrowed, hearing only the crack of the whip, feeling only the strike against him and his hands clenched on the rim of the cuffs. 

Then it stopped, for a long moment. He almost called out for Beelzebub, but then the pain was back, staggering in intensity. He felt his prick stir. _Oh no_ , he thought. 

Another sting of pain, blotting everything else out. He was half hard. _Oh no no no._

Beelzebub set a brutal pace after that. Gabriel broke into guttural sobs, barely holding on, barely keeping his feet under him, as his cock stiffened, thickening with every blow. 

Beelzebub sang out “If it's too much all you have to do is submit to me. 

"Only kneel.” The whip cracked. “And it ends.”

Gabriel willed himself to retighten his grip on the cuffs, stand straighter on his tremulous legs. 

“Oh yes, there you are. Fuck. You want so much, don’t you?”

He bore up through a few more strokes, feeling something building inside of him. A strike landed, perfectly placed, atop another line of fire from before.

“Oh God,” he howled, as a new line of fire streaked across his back. The whip cracked as it made its way back to Beelzebub.

“She's not here, Gabriel. It's only us.” _Crack._ “But I've got you.” _Crack_. 

Gabriel felt a wrenching sob shake through him, fell into that yawning abyss tearing open inside him, sank into the ocean of loss waiting there, and held fast with his hands.

The sound of the whip rang out, and pain lanced through him. Another line of fire, laid atop all the others, and he felt it: felt the burning, vivid edge of what too much really was. He bore one last stroke before a scream poured out from somewhere inside he hadn't known existed, and fell to his knees, hands splayed on the ground as his wings buffeted open into existence behind him. 

He keened. A furious, desperate cry of grief and abandonment tore out of his lungs. 

And then Beelzebub's hands were on him, head against his burning shoulder, arms tucked under his wings, around him, shushing him, calling him good and strong and beautiful, one hand reaching around to brush softly along his cock. Heat and light exploded within him, out of him, and for a moment, everything stopped.

* * *

“Aw fuck. Gabriel. Gabriel?” 

He looked up at Beelzebub's stupid face. They looked worried. Why worried? He tried to talk, but the consonants and vowels felt thick on his tongue and slid stickily sideways. He giggled. 

"Motherfucking stupid pigeon," they hissed. "Are you ok?" 

"'M’fiiiine. Fiine!" A wave of exhaustion hit him. He tried to rally a miracle, waved his hand up and down, snapped once, twice, and finally in the right direction. Nothing happened. 

Beelzebub cursed again, with fervor. 

His head felt so heavy, but he wanted to see them. He craned his head up with an effort, and complained "S'not working." And giggled. 

"What the fuck, Gabriel, you're drunk. I didn't get you drunk." 

He shifted a little, hissed at the pain traced across his back, laughter bubbling up with his words. "Yes, you did." His chest shook with mirth. 

* * *

_One minute he’s crying and now this_ , thought Beelzebub. 

They asked, "Fucking how did _I_ get you drunk?"

"With...with…ith… the _thingingie_." He waved vaguely off to the side. Beelzebub's eyes followed the flapping of his hand and saw the whip. 

_Fuck, I should have expected this._

"Well, you're just going to have to get un-drunk. I can't send you back to Heaven like this."

Gabriel tried to snap again, and again, mostly in the wrong direction entirely, squeezing his eyes with the effort, until his laughter merged into a half sob. "Can't, can't, sorry, sorry Beezleb… Beelez….Beezel…" His breath was catching and so was Beelzebub's heart, little used and out of practice. 

"Shh, shh, it's fine, little pigeon, it's fine." They wrapped an arm across his chest and tugged them close, his breath evening out, while they tried frantically to think of what to do. He needed to be clean, and safe, and sleep this off somewhere. Clean they could take care of here with a miracle, but they could feel their reserves already dwindled. Or in their private hot spring, but getting there would take a miracle, as would getting back out, and there was nowhere dry to sleep. As for safe? Well, nowhere in Hell was really safe -- not for an angel in his state anyway -- and probably not for themself either if they were found together. 

The idea of abandoning him somewhere in Hell was surprisingly distasteful. 

Gabriel giggled, mumbled. Beelzebub ran a hand over his stupid head. "What was that?"

"I have kneeeees," he said, tapping one with a finger, and cackled. 

Beelzebub sighed. He really needed to sleep this off. _Fuck. Sleep._ Sleep sounded incredible right now. But they had to get this problem angel sorted first. Taking stock, they considered their reserves, pulled him tight against them with one arm, and snapped. 

They manifested on the floor of Gabriel's living room, absent the inconvenient wings. 

_Thank Hell for small favors._

Gabriel’s "Oh" of surprise turned into a new course of giggles. 

_Really, fucking really, I can't believe this,_ they thought. 

Beelzebub stood, then tucked their arms under his armpits, drew on a thread of power to compensate for their flagging physical energy, and pulled him up to a standing position. 

A roughly standing position. 

Ok, fine, a leaning position. 

"Gabriel, _Gabriel_ , I need you to help me. We gotta get you cleaned up. You gotta walk.” 

He sighed, mumbled "Mmmkay," and they led him, half leaning, almost stumbling, to his bathroom. 

It had a shower. No tub. _Motherfucker,_ he couldn't stand in the shower on his own. What if he passed out?

Beelzebub also had no intention of standing in their shirt and trousers next to him, getting soaked through just to hold him up. And the idea of being naked with him yet _-ever_ , _ever_ , they thought, was not welcome either. They knew if they changed into something suitable via miracle, they'd be running on fumes. Stuck here. 

_Fuck it, I can sleep it off on the couch,_ they thought, and with a gesture, they were clothed in a striped bathing costume. 

Beelzebub helped lower him onto the toilet, an entirely unnecessary element of decor. They'd have to ask him about it later. "Gabriel, come on. You gotta take your socks off or they'll get wet."

He lolled forward against their chest. "You'rrrre niiice," he breathed. "And stripey." More giggles.

He did not move to take his socks off. With an aggrieved sigh, Beelzebub leaned him up against the wall next to the toilet with stern imprecations to stay there, and knelt to remove his stupid socks. 

_Stupid socks with their stupid little wings_ , they thought, tossing them aside. 

"Alright," they said. And, bending, they slid an arm under his and around his waist. Beelzebub lifted with a grunt and said, "Fucking help me out here, you massive idiot." Gabriel groaned and swayed to his feet. 

"Watch your step," Beelzebub told him, and got him into the shower, where he leaned against the wall, head bowed under the spray. The sight of him stirred inconvenient feelings. Beelzebub wondered how they could still want anything like that after the events of the day. 

They reached for shampoo, uncapped it. It was redolent of lilies. _You vain bastard,_ they thought, setting the bottle aside to massage his scalp. 

Gabriel hissed, sharp and unexpected. 

"I'm washing your hair, you prat. Close your eyes if you don't want soap in them. Fucking heaven," they said but they scooped the soap sliding over his forehead back with clean hands, helped him rinse. They lathered soap, smelling of fresh cut grass, along his back, and he mewled at the touch along already bruising, wealed skin. 

The sound stirred something deep in their belly. _Fuck,_ they needed a wank again. But they were too fucking tired. 

"Come on," they said. "Come on, help me out here, we're both exhausted." They pressed the soap into his hands. Laboriously, he lathered, dropped it, apologized pitifully. 

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” they said, and retrieved the soap. “Just get yourself cleaned up so you can sleep.” 

He probably wouldn’t win any awards for thoroughness, and when he lifted his foot to try to wash it, Beelzebub said, “Fuck no. Don't even think about it. You had socks on, and I don’t think we need you falling in the shower. You can change your fucking sheets tomorrow if it bothers you.” 

Gabriel looked utterly wrung out, his giggles fading into a blank-faced yawn. Beelzebub wrapped him up in an enormous towel and made sure he didn’t fall on his stupid face before he got to the bed. 

Feeling their own exhaustion building, a stray fly buzzing lazily around them, they rummaged through some likely drawers in Gabriel’s closet until they came up with a set of crisp, button-down, lavender pajamas with an embroidered wing on the pocket hem. “What a prat,” they muttered, and found a pair of loose boxers and a mauve t-shirt that they’d end up swimming in. “Whatever.” 

They tossed the pajamas on the bed next to Gabriel, left the bathing suit in a damp pile on the bathroom floor, and cleaned up, sighing under the water as it ran in rivulets down the back of their neck. They didn’t usually spend so long wielding a flogger or a whip and they were sore from their shoulder blade all the way down their arm. Beelzebub seriously considered leaning their own head on the shower wall before shaking themselves back into motion. They had to get dry and into their makeshift pajamas. Not their preference, but they were in Heaven, with one useless angel, and maybe one miracle left to their name. They weren’t about to waste their only defense on their preferred nightwear. 

Barefoot, they padded into the bedroom to check on Gabriel, who had curled up on top of the covers. The corner of Beelzebub’s mouth quirked and they murmured, “Lazy fucking angel.” They rustled him under the sheets, noticing and not much caring that Gabriel had buttoned his top out of sequence. He barely roused enough to move, violet eyes fluttering closed under long lashes 

Beelzebub turned to go, heard Gabriel’s voice, gravelly with sleep and fatigue, say, so quietly that they almost thought they’d imagined it, “Don’t go.”

Beelzebub turned back. “What did you say?”

Gabriel’s eyes were barely open, but they looked right at Beelzebub’s when he said, “Do you have to go?”

Beelzebub sighed. They really didn’t have the energy for this. “I'm just going to the couch. I’m too fucking tired to get home.”

His responding “oh” was so small that Beelzebub took a step closer without intending. “Do you need something first? You took a lot.” 

He shook his head, eyes squeezing shut. “I just…”

“You just what?” they bit, exhaustion sapping the little patience they’d been able to summon. They needed, badly, to be flat - flat and unconscious. 

“I thought you might _stay_.” His meaning fell clear as a stone into a pond. He looked like he might cry. 

Beelzebub looked aggrieved. “If you cry, I _will_ go sleep on the couch. And don’t steal the covers.” They dragged themselves to the other side of the bed, groaned with the relief of sitting on the bed, slid in between the sheets - lilac _, of course, ugh_ \- and settled in, feeling their whole body go lax with the pleasure of being entirely flat. 

They felt Gabriel shift, heard the sound of him turning over, but ignored it and tumbled almost immediately out of conscious awareness into sleep. 

In the night, they drifted back to the edge of consciousness - somehow the covers had gotten rucked up around their face and were tickling their nose. _Tickling?_ they thought, rousing a little more. They reached up to brush the blankets off their face, readying an insult for Gabriel.

Their fingers brushed against not cloth, but _feathers_. Wiggling up a little further on the bed, Beelzebub emerged to see that Gabriel had rucked down the covers to his waist, and, apparently still dead asleep, unfurled one wing to pool out over the side of the bed. 

And the other to cover Beelzebub in a cocoon of warmth. Which tickled their nose. “Disgusting,” they whispered, before rolling over and scooting back along the line of the wing. To get into a position where they weren’t so likely to end up with feathers in their nose again. Not to get closer to Gabriel. 

Certainly not. 

Gabriel smiled in his sleep, shifted closer. 

* * *

Hours later, Gabriel awoke, alone. A note lay on the pillow next to him. 

“See you in two weeks. Your turn for the agenda.”

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/186531802@N03/49725981062/in/dateposted-public/)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has a softer landing than the chapters up until now might have led you to expect.
> 
> Thank you for coming along on this ride, and my affection and gratitude to the ineffable bureaucracy discord server - y'all are a continuing delight.
> 
> Also the comments I've received have given me life and inspiration. 
> 
> A million thank yous to [Melibe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melibe/pseuds/Melibe), who made the beautiful sketch at the end of the chapter.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first published smut and far and away the longest thing that I have written. I’ve gotten all the concrit I want and need, but if you enjoyed this, please let me know! Kudos, emojis, and comments are all simply delightful. 
> 
> The title is from Bastille’s Act of Kindness, one of the [songs on my writing playlist.  
>  ](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6sc5Nc7x5tfgTEyYPkUotJ?si=IZWbhsXvRHKKmNvGPNWpIQ)  
> (selected lyrics below)  
> An act of kindness  
> Is what you show to me  
> Not more than I can take  
> Not more than I can take  
> Kindness is what you show to me  
> It holds me 'till I ache  
> Overflow and start to break  
> Oh I, got a feeling this will shake me down  
> Oh I, kind of hoping this will turn me round
> 
> [Photo credits for the moodboard can be found here](https://eunyisadoran.tumblr.com/post/612352046916665344/i-might-be-just-a-little-bit-obsessed-with-an)
> 
> This goes down as one of the strangest rides of my creative life thus far. Thank you for reading!


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